About This Report

ScopeThe Microsoft Security Intelligence Report (SIR) is published twice per year. These reportsfocus on data and trends observed in the first and second halves of each calendar year. Pastreports and related resources are available for download at http://www.microsoft.com/sir.We continue to focus on malware data, software vulnerability disclosure data, vulnerabilityexploit data, and related trends in this seventh installment of the Security Intelligence Report.We hope that readers find the data, insights, and guidance provided in this report useful inhelping them protect their networks and users.

Reporting PeriodThis Security Intelligence Report focuses on the first half of 2009 (1H09), though it alsocontains data and trends observed over the past several years. The nomenclature usedthroughout the report to refer to different reporting periods is nHyy, where nH refers toeither the first (1) or second (2) half of the year, and yy denotes the year. For example,2H08 represents the period covering the second half of 2008 (July 1 through December 31),while 1H09 represents the period covering the first half of 2009 (January 1 through June 30).

Data SourcesIf you are interested in the products, services, tools, and Web sites used to provide the datafor this report, please see Appendix C of the report.

7Microsoft Security Intelligence Report

Key Findings

T his report provides the Microsoft perspective on the security and privacy threat landscape over the six-month period from January through June 2009. This section summarizes the key points from the main section of the report.

Malicious and Potentially Unwanted Software

◆◆ The most significant trend in 1H09 was the large increase in worm infections detected in many countries and regions worldwide. ◆◆ Despite the global nature of the Internet, there are significant differences in the types of threats that affect users in different parts of the world. ◆◆ In the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Italy, trojans were the largest single category of threat; in China, several language-specific browser-based threats were prevalent; in Brazil, malware targeting online banking was widespread; and in Spain and Korea, worms dominated, led by threats targeting online gamers.

Operating System Trends

◆◆ Infection rates for Windows Vista® were significantly lower than for Windows® XP in all configurations in 1H09. ◆◆ The infection rate of Windows Vista SP1 was 61.9 percent less than that of Windows XP SP3. ◆◆ Comparing release-to-manufacture (RTM) versions, the infection rate of Windows Vista was 85.3 percent less than that of Windows XP. ◆◆ The infection rate of Windows Server® 2008 RTM was 56.1 percent less than that of Windows Server 2003 SP2. ◆◆ The higher the service pack level, the lower the rate of infection:

◆◆ Service packs include all previously released security updates at the time of issue. They can also include additional security features, mitigations, or changes to default settings to protect users. ◆◆ Users who install service packs may generally maintain their computers better than users who do not install service packs and may also be more cautious in the way they browse the Internet, open attachments, and engage in other activities that can open computers to attack. ◆◆ Server versions of Windows typically display a lower infection rate on average than client versions. Servers tend to have a lower effective attack surface than computers running client operating systems because they are more likely to be used under con- trolled conditions by trained administrators and to be protected by one or more layers of security. ◆◆ These trends are proving to be consistent over time.

8 January through June 2009

The Threat Landscape at Home and in the Enterprise

◆◆ Computers in enterprise environments (those running Microsoft Forefront™ Client Security) were much more likely to encounter worms during 1H09 than home com- puters running Windows Live™ OneCare™.◆◆ Win32/Conficker, the top threat detected in enterprise environments, was not in the top ten threats in home environments. Several Conficker variants are designed to spread via removable and network shared media, both of which are common in enter- prise environments. (In April Microsoft announced security update KB971029, which makes it more difficult for Conficker and similar worms to spread in this manner.)

Worldwide Malware Category Trends

◆◆ Miscellaneous Trojans (including rogue security software) remained the most preva- lent category.◆◆ Worms rose from 5th place in 2H08 to become the second-most prevalent category in 1H09.◆◆ The prevalence of Password Stealers & Monitoring Tools also rose, due in part to increases in malware targeting online gamers.

Analysis of Malware Hosts

◆◆ Miscellaneous Potentially Unwanted Software impressions detected by the Smart- Screen Filter in Internet Explorer® 8 increased from 35.0 percent of malware impres- sions in 2H08 to 44.5 percent in 1H09, while the percentage of computers cleaned declined from 22.8 percent to 14.9 percent for the category. This suggests that Smart- Screen and similar technologies may be successfully intercepting these threats before they are downloaded to computers.◆◆ Miscellaneous Potentially Unwanted Software is disproportionally likely to be distrib- uted over the Web. By contrast, worms are rarely distributed by malicious Web sites, accounting for just 1.2 percent of SmartScreen impressions, compared to 21.3 percent of computers cleaned.

Geographic Distribution of Malware Hosting Sites

◆◆ More malware distribution sites are discovered on a daily basis than phishing sites.

◆◆ Malware hosting tends to be more stable and less geographically diverse than phishing. This is probably due to the relatively recent use of server takedowns and Web reputation as weapons in the fight against malware distribution, which means that malware distribu- tors have not been forced to diversify their hosting arrangements, as phishers have.

9Microsoft Security Intelligence Report

Analysis of Phishing Sites

◆◆ Phishing impressions rose significantly in 1H09, due primarily to a large increase in phishing attacks targeting social networking sites. ◆◆ Phishers continued to target a wider range of Web-site types than in the past, with gaming sites, portals, and the online presences of major corporations being some of the most frequently targeted sites in 1H09. ◆◆ After remaining mostly consistent throughout 2H08 and through April 2009, suddenly the number of impressions nearly quadrupled in May and rose even higher in June, due in part to a campaign or campaigns targeting social networks. ◆◆ Financial institutions, social networks, and e-commerce sites remain favored targets for phishing attempts. ◆◆ Researchers also observed some diversification into other types of institutions, such as online gaming sites, Web portals, and large software and telecommunications companies.

Geographic Distribution of Phishing Sites

◆◆ Phishing sites are hosted on free hosting sites, on compromised Web servers, and in numerous other contexts. ◆◆ Phishing sites tend to be concentrated in a few locations but have been detected in many places around the world. Microsoft has tracked phishing sites on every inhabited con- tinent and in 46 of 50 U.S. states. ◆◆ Locations with smaller populations and fewer Internet hosts tend to have higher con- centrations of phishing pages, although in absolute terms most phishing pages are located in large, industrialized countries/regions with large numbers of Internet hosts.

E-Mail Threats ◆◆ Forefront Online Protection for Exchange (FOPE) blocked 97.3 percent of all messages received at the network edge in 1H09, up from 90.0 percent in 2H08. In total, FOPE blocked more than 98 percent of all messages received. ◆◆ Spam in 1H09 was dominated by product advertisements (primarily pharmaceutical prod- ucts). In total, product advertisements accounted for 69.2 percent of spam in 1H09.

Automated SQL Injection Attacks

◆◆ SQL injection is a technique used by attackers to damage or steal data residing in data- bases that use Structured Query Language (SQL) syntax to control information storage and retrieval. Use of this technique was widely observed during 1H09.

10 January through June 2009

◆◆ SQL injection usually involves directly passing malicious SQL code to a program or script that queries a database. If the program or script does not properly validate the input, the attacker may be able to execute arbitrary commands.◆◆ Beginning in late 2007, attackers began to use automated tools to compromise large numbers of Web sites through SQL injection, in an attempt to spread malware. Web applications often construct pages dynamically as they are requested, by retrieving information from a database and using it to populate the page.

Exploit Trends—Browser-Based Exploits

◆◆ For browser-based attacks on Windows XP–based machines, Microsoft vulnerabilities accounted for 56.4 percent of the total. On Windows Vista–based machines, Microsoft vulnerabilities accounted for just 15.5 percent of the total.◆◆ Microsoft software accounted for 6 of the top 10 browser-based vulnerabilities attacked on computers running Windows XP in 1H09, compared to only 1 of the top 10 on computers running Windows Vista.

Microsoft Office Format Files

◆◆ The most frequently exploited vulnerabilities in Microsoft Office software during 1H09 were also some of the oldest. More than half of the vulnerabilities exploited were first identified and addressed by Microsoft security updates in 2006.◆◆ 71.2 percent of the attacks exploited a single vulnerability for which a security update (MS06-027) had been available for three years. Computers that had this update applied were protected from all these attacks.◆◆ The majority of Microsoft Office attacks observed in 1H09 (55.5 percent) affected Microsoft Office program installations that had last been updated between July 2003 and June 2004. Most of these attacks affected Office 2003 users who had not applied a single service pack or other security update since the original release of Office 2003 in October 2003.◆◆ By contrast, the computers in the sample set were significantly more likely to have had recent Windows security updates applied.◆◆ Users who do not keep both their Microsoft Office program installations and Win- dows operating systems up to date with service packs and security updates are at increased risk of attack.◆◆ Microsoft recommends that computers be configured to use Microsoft Update to keep Windows operating systems and other Microsoft software updated.

11Microsoft Security Intelligence Report

Analysis of Drive-By Download Pages

◆◆ The majority of drive-by download pages are hosted on compromised legitimate Web sites. Attackers gain access to legitimate sites through intrusion or by posting malicious code to a poorly secured Web form, like a comment field on a blog. ◆◆ Compromised servers acting as exploit servers can have massive reach; one exploit server can be responsible for hundreds of thousands of infected Web pages. ◆◆ Exploit servers in 2009 were able to infect many thousands of pages in a short period of time. ◆◆ The Trojan Downloaders & Droppers category was the most frequently encountered category among drive-by download sites, with 40.7 percent of the total. Trojan down- loaders are well suited for delivery by drive-by download because they can be used to install other threats on infected computers.

Industry-Wide Vulnerability Disclosures

◆◆ Total unique vulnerability disclosures across the industry decreased sharply in 1H09, down 28.4 percent from 2H08. ◆◆ While application vulnerabilities are down from 2H08, operating system vulner- abilities are roughly consistent with the previous period, and browser vulnerabilities actually increased slightly. ◆◆ Vulnerabilities rated as High severity by the Common Vulnerability Scoring System CVSS decreased 12.9 percent from 2H08; 46.0 percent of all vulnerabilities were rated as High severity. ◆◆ As with severity, the complexity trend in 1H09 is a generally positive one. 54.2 percent of all vulnerabilities were Low complexity in 1H09, down from 57.7 percent in 2H08, and down almost 30 percentage points over the last five years. ◆◆ Microsoft vulnerability disclosures have mirrored those for the industry as a whole, though on a much smaller scale. Over the past five years, Microsoft vulnerability disclosures have consistently accounted for about 3–6 percent of all disclosures industry wide.

Microsoft Vulnerability Details for 1H09

◆◆ In 1H09 Microsoft released 27 security bulletins, which addressed 87 individual Com- mon Vulnerabilities and Exposures–identified (CVE-identified) vulnerabilities. ◆◆ Responsible disclosure means disclosing vulnerabilities privately to an affected vendor so it can develop a comprehensive security update to address the vulnerability before the details become public knowledge. This helps to keep users safer by preventing

12 January through June 2009

potential attackers from learning about newly discovered vulnerabilities before secu- rity updates are available.◆◆ In 1H09, 79.5 percent of disclosed vulnerabilities in Microsoft software adhered to responsible disclosure practices, up from 70.6 percent in 2H08.

Exploitability Index◆◆ Forty-one vulnerabilities (47.1 percent) were assigned an Exploitability Index rating of 1, meaning that they were considered the most likely to be exploited within 30 days of the associated security bulletin’s release. Microsoft observed ten of these vulnerabili- ties being exploited in the first 30 days.◆◆ Of the 46 vulnerabilities (52.9 percent) that received Exploitability Index ratings of 2 or 3, indicating that exploitation would be unreliable or unlikely, none were identified to have been publicly exploited within 30 days.

Usage Trends for Windows Update and Microsoft Update

◆◆ The prompt adoption of security updates and other software upgrades can significantly mitigate the spread and impact of malware. Microsoft recommends that computers be configured to use Microsoft Update to keep Windows operating systems and other Microsoft software updated. ◆◆ Windows Update provides updates for Windows components, and for device drivers provided by Microsoft and other hardware vendors. It also distributes signa- ture updates for Microsoft anti-malware products, and the monthly release of the Malicious Software Removal Tool (MSRT). ◆◆ Microsoft Update provides all of the updates offered through Windows Update and provides updates for other Microsoft software, such as the Microsoft Office system.◆◆ Microsoft Update adoption has risen significantly over the past several years, with increasing numbers of Windows Update users choosing to switch to the more compre- hensive service.

The Role of Automatic Updating

◆◆ Automatic updating is one of the most effective tools that users and organizations can utilize to help prevent the spread of malware.◆◆ Automatic updating ensures that updates are installed, and installed quickly, to protect individual computers and the computing environment.

13Microsoft Security Intelligence Report

Regional Variations in Update Service Usage

◆◆ Use of Microsoft online update services varies worldwide due to a number of factors, including broadband Internet connectivity, software piracy, and the percentage of computers managed in enterprise environments. ◆◆ The incidence of software piracy in a location tends to be negatively correlated with usage of Windows Update and Microsoft Update.

Security Breach Trends

◆◆ The top category reported for data loss through a security breach in 1H09 continued to be stolen equipment, such as laptop computers (30.0 percent of all data-loss incidents reported), accounting for twice as many incidents as intrusion. ◆◆ Security breaches from “hacking” or malware incidents remain less than 15.0 percent of the total.

14 January through June 2009

Executive Foreword

W elcome to the seventh installment of Microsoft’s Security Intelligence Report, which I hope you will find is the most extensive and comprehensive edition to date. The cover story in this report looks back at the major threats that have attacked customers over the last 10 years, and then the report drills deeply into the currentthreats that you need to understand and includes what you can do to best manage your risks.

At Microsoft, we remember the pain past incidents caused our customers and we reflect on themfrequently. In particular, the Slammer and Blaster attacks that disrupted the Internet in 2003 are vividreminders of the responsibility we have at Microsoft to ensure our products are as secure and privacy-enhanced as possible.As you can see from the timeline above, 2003 and 2004 were difficult times. But, you can also see thatsince then, major security incidents have become less and less frequent. From the data in this report,you’ll also note that the scope and impact of major events have changed, as well. For example, fromthe press surrounding the Conficker worm that has been attacking customers over the past year, it’seasy to conclude that Conficker is just as widespread and impactful as Slammer or Blaster—but inmost respects, it hasn’t been. In 2003, Blaster became one of the most prevalent threats impactinghome PC users. Six years later, Conficker didn’t even make the Top 10 list among this audience. I don’twant to minimize the pain that many of our customers experienced fighting Conficker, because, asyou’ll read in the report, it was the top threat detected and cleaned in enterprises in the first half of2009, but Conficker emerged in a much different software industry than Slammer and Blaster.Indeed, the software industry has matured a great deal since the days of Slammer and Blaster. Since2003, the software industry has improved its ability to mobilize and coordinate resources to fightthreats. Industry partnerships such as the Microsoft Security Response Alliance (MSRA)1 didn’t existwhen criminals perpetrated the Slammer and Blaster attacks. These industry partnerships, along withothers like the Industry Consortium for Advancement of Security on the Internet (ICASI) have allbeen founded since 2003 to help protect customers and assist the software industry in responding tomajor security events faster and more effectively -- because they allow members to share informationand coordinate efforts. The Conficker Working Group (CWG) was founded earlier this year, estab-lishing a new model for how the collective industry can work together to mitigate global threats.The industry was able to proactively get ahead of Conficker by discovering the vulnerability beforeattackers could use it in widespread attacks. The Security Science team at Microsoft was able to findthe MS08-067 vulnerability, which Conficker uses to propagate, and work with the Microsoft SecurityResponse Center (MSRC) to release its update before attackers could use it for a Blaster-type attack.Our industry partners helped protect many customers from attack via the Microsoft Active Protections1 MSRA includes programs like the Global Infrastructure Alliance for Internet Safety (GIAIS), the Microsoft Virus Initiative (MVI), the Virus Informa- tion Alliance (VIA), the Security Cooperation Program (SCP), and the Microsoft Security Support Alliance (MSSA)

15Microsoft Security Intelligence Report

Program (MAPP). MAPP supplies Microsoft vulnerability information to security software partners prior to security update releases from Microsoft. By obtaining security-vulnerability information earlier from the MSRC, partners gain additional time to build customer software protections ahead of Microsoft’s public security update release. The program serves security providers, particularly vendors of security software or devices, such as anti-virus, network-based intrusion detection and prevention systems (IDS/IPS), or host-based intrusion prevention systems (HIDS/HIPS). This program enabled the majority of MAPP partners to provide protections to their customers for Conficker 24 hours after the MS08-067 security update was released. This meant that many customers were protected up to a week earlier than traditionally possible, and certainly much earlier than customers could obtain such defense-in-depth protections and threat mitigations in 2003. With the vulnerability that Slammer exploited, many administrators didn’t know whether they needed to apply a security update or that it had to be applied manually. Today, customers are notified and protected much faster; multiple communications channels exist to help customers find and understand information on security vulnerabilities. Security advisories help draw attention to security issues as they unfold, and pro- vide customers with critical information before security bulletins become available. Microsoft’s advanced notification service provides customers with an insight into the number and nature of security updates that Microsoft will be releasing each month so they can plan more effectively for the deployment of the updates. Security bulletins provide information on vulnerabilities, along with workarounds and mitigations. As you’ll read in this report, over 96 percent of all bulletins contain workarounds and/or mitiga- tions to give customers more information, options and time to make better deployment decisions. Keeping Microsoft software up-to-date is easier today than it was in the Slammer/Blaster era. With auto- matic updates for consumers and small businesses, and Windows Server Update Services and System Center Configuration Manager for enterprises, plus the availability of many third-party updat- ing services, customers have quicker access to security information and more help deploying security updates than ever before. If you aren’t familiar with some, or any of these advancements, please review the Microsoft Security Update Guide that we published earlier this year. It will help you find and use all of the information, programs, tools and communications channels that Microsoft uses to help protect its customers. The guide can be found here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=C3D986D0- ECC3-4CE0-9C25-048EC5B52A4F&displaylang=en. The progress that the software industry has made to better protect systems and customers might be small consolation to the users of those 5 million systems that were infected with Conficker in the first half of 2009. Still, it is a significant step forward, given that more than 100 times as many systems were protected from Conficker. This is in stark contrast to the Slammer and Blaster attacks of 2003 where many, many more systems were infected. The industry will continue to work together to make the frequency, scale and scope of emerging threats as minimal as possible. We thank you for your help and efforts to protect the ecosystem, and look forward to continuing to work with you to create a safer, more trusted Internet. George Stathakopoulos General Manager, Trustworthy Computing Security Trustworthy Computing Group

16 Trustwor thy Computing: Security Engineering at Microsoft

The computer threat landscape is constantly changing. As threats continue to evolve from mischievoushackers pursuing notoriety to organized criminals stealing data for monetary gain, public concern isescalating. Trustworthy Computing (TwC), formed in 2002, is Microsoft’s commitment to providingsecure, private, and reliable computing experiences for our customers.

TwC Security includes three technology centers that work together to address security issues byworking closely together to supply the services, information, and response needed to better under-stand the evolving threat landscape, help protect customers from online threats, and share knowl-edge with the broader security ecosystem.

Microsoft Malware Protection Center

The MMPC is a global team of experienced malware research and response specialists dedicatedto protecting customers from new threats, including viruses, worms, spyware, adware, and othermalicious and potentially unwanted software. The MMPC provides malware research and responseexpertise that supports the range of Microsoft security products and services, including the Fore-front suite of products, Windows Live OneCare, Windows Defender, and the Malicious SoftwareRemoval Tool. The response arm of the MMPC includes a global network of research and responselabs located around the world.

Microsoft Security Response Center

The Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC) is a leading security risk analysis and managementcenter that helps identify, monitor, resolve, and respond to security incidents and Microsoft softwaresecurity vulnerabilities 24 hours a day, seven days a week. On constant alert for security issues, theMSRC monitors security newsgroups, responds to e-mail messages sent to secure@microsoft.com,and manages a company-wide security update release process.

The data and analysis in this report are presented from the perspective of these three centers andtheir partners in the various Microsoft Product Groups.Microsoft Security Intelligence Report

Melissa Plus 10: Keeping People Safe in

the Age of Malware Ten Years of Malware and Security Threats, 1999–2009 This year marks the tenth anniversary of the release of W97M/Melissa, which created what many security professionals call the first truly global malware outbreak. Since then, malware and related threats have grown from a novelty to a fact of life that affects the way millions of people work and play online. To understand why this is so, it’s important to consider the technological and cultural factors that came together in the final years of the twentieth century to set two powerful forces on a collision course with each other: the new revolution in communications wrought by the rise of the Internet and the age-old desire of some to gain fame and profit at the expense of others.

Desktop Computing in 1999

In retrospect, the rise of malware as a significant threat affecting computer users around the world over the last 10 years might be considered inevitable. The first decade of the twenty-first century has seen a collision between the sudden, meteoric rise of the Internet as a mainstay of modern life for millions of people and a culture of software development and use that had evolved in a time when Internet connectivity was rare—and malicious misuse of the network even rarer. Many of the security measures computer users take for granted today were unknown or not widely deployed in early 1999. Even in the midst of the so-called “dot-com boom,” less than a third of homes in North America and Europe had Internet access,2 with broadband technologies accounting for less than 10 percent of that overall number.3 Several different vendors produced antivirus software for personal computers but typically only issued defini- tion updates monthly (or less often). Desktop computer operating systems, like Microsoft Windows 98 and Mac OS 8, were developed in an era before Internet access was wide- spread or commonplace. They did not include a number of security features considered fundamental today, like software firewalls or access control list–based (ACL-based) file system security. Windows Update, the service that allows Windows users to obtain system updates over the Internet, was in its infancy, and options for updating all the computers in an organization were limited. The lack of a facility for quickly or automatically updating large numbers of computers made it difficult or impossible to respond effectively to a threat event. Most communication and productivity software during this time period was designed for versatility and convenience, with less attention given to security considerations. The then- current version of the Microsoft Office productivity suite was Office 97, the Standard Edition of which included versions of Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel®, Microsoft PowerPoint®, and Microsoft Outlook®. Many people were also using Outlook 98, an upgraded version of the messaging and collaboration client offered as a no-cost download to registered users of Outlook 97. The Microsoft Visual Basic® for Applications (VBA) scripting language

allowed extensive customization and automation of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, butwithout many of the security features that VBA developers today take for granted, such ascode signing.Meanwhile, the world was undergoing an unprecedented rise in Internet connectivity thatwould transform life for people on every continent. The number of Internet users world-wide more than quadrupled between 2000 and 2009 to 1.7 billion people, a quarter of theEarth’s population, according to one estimate.4 At the same time, many parts of the worldhave shifted from dial-up Internet access at home to broadband access, meaning hundredsof millions more computers are connected to the Internet all day—and often all night, aswell. Broadband penetration in the so-called G7 industrialized nations (Canada, France,Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States) rose by an average ofmore than 50 percent per year between 2001 and 2008.5 These factors, along with a generallack of understanding of security threats on the part of the general public, combined tocreate a large and growing attack surface across multiple continents—perfect conditionsfor the rise of a new generation of malware.

Early Worms and Macro Viruses (1999–c. 2005)

In some ways, the modern era of malware began on Friday, March 26, 1999, when thousandsof e-mail systems around the world were overwhelmed by a fast-spreading new threat.Designated W97M/Melissa and typically referred to in media accounts as the Melissa virusor Melissa worm, the virus caused more than U.S.$100 million in damages worldwide aspart of the first truly widespread malware outbreak affecting ordinary computer users.W97M/Melissa was an example of a macro virus—a class of viruses that use an applica-tion’s macro language, such as the VBA scripting language in Microsoft Office applications, Encyclopediato distribute themselves. Macro viruses were among the first threats to spread widely on WM/Concept: The first widelythe Internet, though they have greatly diminished in prevalence over the past 10 years due known Microsoft Word macro virus,to application security measures such as disabling unsigned macros by default. W97M/ written for Word 6.0. It spreadsMelissa was not the first macro virus to spread widely. Earlier threats such as WM/Concept by infecting documents and templates, including the Normal.and W97M/Wazzu infected Word documents as early as 1995, spreading when users dot template.exchanged infected files through e-mail, by floppy disk, or on a network share. W97M/ W97M/Wazzu: A macro virus thatMelissa propagated much more rapidly than these earlier threats by exploiting the way infects Microsoft Word documentsWord macros could be used to automatically send e-mail messages through Outlook. and templates. When executed, it attempts to insert the text “wazzu”W97M/Melissa was introduced to the Internet in a Word document posted to the well- into the infected document at atrafficked Usenet newsgroup alt.sex, posing as a list of passwords for pornographic Web random location and to relocate existing words randomly.sites. When the infected document was opened in Word 97, W97M/Melissa copied itselfto the Normal.dot template file that loads by default when Word is opened so that any http://www.microsoft.com/av

subsequent documents created by the user would also be infected by the virus. If Outlookwas installed on the computer, the virus then automatically created an infected Word4 “World Internet Users and Population Stats.” Internet World Stats. http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm5 “Broadband penetration and density.” Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. December 2008. http://www.oecd.org/ sti/ict/broadband

19Microsoft Security Intelligence Report

document titled “Important Message From [user name]” and used Outlook to send the Encyclopedia infected document to the first 50 e-mail addresses in the Outlook Address Book, with the message body “Here is that document you asked for ... don’t show anyone else ;-)”. Many VBS/LoveLetter: A family of mass-mailing worms that targets recipients opened the messages, believing them to have been sent legitimately by friends computers running certain or acquaintances—an early form of reputation hijacking. The computers of recipients who versions of Windows. It can spread as an e-mail attachment opened the attachment were themselves infected, and the cycle began again. The result was and through an Internet Relay a torrent of messages that shut down enterprise e-mail systems around the world, includ- Chat (IRC) channel. The worm ing those of global corporations and government agencies. can download, overwrite, delete, infect, and run files on the infected Over the next few years, a number of other macro viruses caused periodic outbreaks, computer. some even more widespread and damaging than W97M/Melissa. Most used VBA and VBS/VBSWGbased: A generic detection for VBScript code that is VBScript to access the victim’s Outlook Address Book and send infected files to some or all known to be automatically generated of the victim’s contacts. Like W97M/Melissa, some of the most virulent threats used social by a particular malware tool. engineering—manipulating victims through trickery—to entice recipients into opening the Win32/Slammer: A memory infected files, targeting users’ motivations and desires with tactics similar to those still used resident worm that spreads through a vulnerability present in by attackers today. VBS/LoveLetter, which infected millions of computers in 2000, sent computers running either MSDE messages with the subject line “ILOVEYOU”. In another outbreak in 2001, a virus detected 2000 or SQL Server that have not as Virus:VBS/VBSWGbased.gen used a payload disguised as a photograph of tennis star applied Microsoft Security Bulletin MS02-039. Anna Kournikova. Macro virus outbreaks declined significantly after 2001 with the wide- Win32/Msblast: A family of network spread adoption of Office 2000 and subsequent releases, which block or disable macros worms that exploit a vulnerability that are not digitally signed by a trusted source. addressed by security bulletin MS03-039. The worm may attempt Even as macro viruses were receding in prominence, a number of other widespread out- Denial of Service (DoS) attacks breaks were affecting computer users around the world. These were caused by worms that on some server sites or create a backdoor on the infected system. used e-mail and other network services to replicate and distribute copies of themselves. Win32/Sasser: A family of network Some early worms, like 2001’s Win32/Sircam, distributed themselves using tactics similar worms that exploit a vulnerability to those of macro viruses, by searching for e-mail addresses in the files of an infected com- fixed by security bulletin MS04- puter and sending copies of the worm to the addresses. Others spread primarily by taking 011. The worm spreads by randomly scanning IP addresses advantage of vulnerabilities in network services and Internet programs. In 2003, Win32/ for vulnerable machines and Slammer exploited a vulnerability in Microsoft SQL Server® and Microsoft SQL Server infecting any that are found. 2000 Desktop Engine (MSDE); Win32/Msblast, also from 2003, targeted the Distributed Win32/Nimda: A family of worms Component Object Model (DCOM) protocol; Win32/Sasser, from 2004, exploited a vulner- that spread by exploiting a vulnerability addressed by ability in the Local Security Authority Subsystem Service (LSASS). Some of the most damaging Microsoft Security Bulletin MS01- threats used multiple methods for propagation. Win32/Nimda, released in 2001, spread 020. The worm compromises security by sharing the C drive through e-mail, by infecting application files locally and on network shares, by infecting and creating a Guest account with Microsoft Word, and by exploiting a vulnerability in Microsoft Internet Explorer. administrator permissions. http://www.microsoft.com/av

20 January through June 2009

Figure 1. Timeline of notable malware outbreaks, 1999–2009

Profit-Oriented Malware (c. 2004–Present)

While many of the early worms were extremely destructive and costly in terms of clean-upcosts and lost productivity, most were created as pranks or as a means of raising the creators’ Encyclopediastatus in the online “hacker” community. It wasn’t long, however, before criminals seized Win32/Mydoom: A family of mass-on the opportunities malware provided for theft, blackmail, and other criminal activities. mailing worms that spread throughThe mass-mailing worm family Win32/Mydoom, which appeared in January 2004, created e-mail. Some variants also spread through P2P networks. It actsone of the earliest examples of a botnet—a set of computers that are secretly and illicitly as a backdoor trojan and cancontrolled by an attacker, who orders them to perform activities such as sending spam, sometimes be used to launch DoShosting pages used in phishing attacks, stealing passwords or sensitive information, and attacks against specific Web sites.distributing other malware. The computers in the Mydoom botnet were themselves used to http://www.microsoft.com/avsend spam and to conduct distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks.As for-profit malware became more widespread, the number of headline-grabbing out-breaks diminished. During the heyday of the mass mailers and similar worms, tales ofmalware outbreaks spread beyond the technical press and achieved a very high profile inthe public consciousness, garnering considerable coverage even in media outlets that usu-ally had little or nothing to do with computers or security. For example, Win32/Msblast,also known as “Blaster,” was the subject of a 10-page feature article in the January 2004issue of the U.S. edition of Vanity Fair, a popular magazine that ordinarily focuses on highculture and general investigative journalism. The result of all this attention was that mostof these worms had an effective lifetime of only a few days, as the highly visible nature ofeach threat motivated security and IT professionals to act quickly to stop its spread andcontain the damage. Moreover, the creators of some of these threats were identified andcaught quickly, with security professionals and law enforcement uniting to focus on a com-mon high-priority goal. David L. Smith, the creator of W97M/Melissa, was arrested just sixdays after introducing the virus to the Internet, following a cooperative effort by antivirusresearchers, America Online, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the State ofNew Jersey Division of Criminal Justice. To more effectively serve their creators’ purposes,new threats tended not only to spread much more slowly and quietly than their predeces-sors but also to be consistently maintained and updated by their creators in an effort toevade detection by antivirus software.

21Microsoft Security Intelligence Report

Around the same time that Win32/Mydoom began infecting systems around the world, Encyclopedia the first variants of a different mass mailer, Win32/Bagle, were appearing on the Internet. Though it received relatively little attention compared to the faster-spreading Win32/ Win32/Bagle: A worm that spreads by e-mailing itself to addresses Mydoom, Win32/Bagle was the first threat to display many of the behaviors that have found on an infected computer. come to typify the modern, profit-oriented threat. Many Win32/Bagle variants use multiple Some variants also spread through peer-to-peer (P2P) networks. mechanisms to avoid detection and removal, such as attempting to disable Windows Bagle acts as a backdoor trojan Update and blocking access to the Web sites of antivirus vendors. Perhaps the biggest indi- and can be used to distribute other cator of the professional origins of Win32/Bagle, though, was the ongoing release of a large malicious software. number of variants that were designed specifically to get around mechanisms that antivi- Win32/Vundo: A multiple-component family of programs that deliver rus vendors had developed to detect earlier variants—a move that touched off an “arms pop-up advertisements and may race” between malware creators and antivirus vendors that continues to this day. download and execute arbitrary files. Vundo is often installed as As a result of measures like these, today’s prevalent malware families tend to remain active a browser helper object (BHO) threats for much longer periods of time than their predecessors. As recently as late 2007, without a user’s consent. Win32/Bagle was still among the top 25 threats detected around the world by the Mali- Win32/Zlob: A family of trojans that often pose as downloadable cious Software Removal Tool (MSRT); Win32/Vundo and Win32/Zlob, the seventh- and media codecs. When installed, thirteenth-most detected malware families by Microsoft desktop security products in the Win32/Zlob displays frequent first half of 2009, were first detected in 2004 and 2005, respectively. Newer families rely pop-up advertisements for rogue security software. more heavily on social engineering than on exploiting vulnerabilities in operating systems Win32/Nuwar: A family of and applications, though the exploits that do circulate tend to be more technically sophis- trojan droppers that install a ticated and appear more quickly following the discovery of a vulnerability. distributed P2P downloader trojan. This downloader trojan in Another significant development in recent years has been the rise of an underground turn downloads an e-mail worm economy for the distribution and use of malware. Whereas early threats were usually component. created and released by isolated individuals or small groups, many of the threats that are Win32/Renos: A family of trojan downloaders that install rogue prevalent today are traded in online black markets, where criminals buy or rent access to security software. exploits, password stealers, software for sending spam, and other illicit tools. Large bot- http://www.microsoft.com/av nets, such as the one created by Win32/Nuwar (the “storm worm”) in 2007 and 2008, are rented out to attackers who use them for activities such as spam campaigns, hosting mal- ware servers and phishing pages, and DDoS attacks.6 Attackers often use combinations of several different unrelated threats together, with trojan downloaders and trojan droppers, like Win32/Renos, serving as delivery mechanisms for other malware families.

6 For a more thorough exploration of the “underground economy” of malware creation and use, see “The Threat Ecosystem,” in Microsoft Security Intelligence Report, Volume 5 (January through June 2008), pp. 12–23.

22 January through June 2009

Computer Security Today: Working Together to Close the Gap

By early in the twenty-first century, it was clear that computer security in the Internet erawould require fundamental changes, not only in the way software was architected andbuilt but also in the way software developers, IT departments, and end users thought aboutsecurity. It would no longer be adequate to think of security as a separate or isolated com-ponent of programs and processes. Security would have to become an integral part of bothsoftware and the policies governing its use, at every level. Implementing this vision wouldinvolve the creation of entirely new technical, legal, and social structures for dealing withcomputer security threats. These structures would be built through unprecedented coop-erative effort from software vendors (including Microsoft), academia, government and lawenforcement, and independent security experts.

Trustworthy ComputingOn January 15, 2002, Microsoft then-chairman Bill Gates sent a memo to all full-timeemployees of Microsoft and its subsidiaries. As with previous company-wide memos,which had led to initiatives like the Microsoft Internet strategy and the .NET Framework,this message proposed a fundamental shift in the company’s approach to a central compo-nent of its business. The topic was a concept called Trustworthy Computing (TwC).Gates wrote: Computing is already an important part of many people’s lives. Within ten years, it will be an integral and indispensable part of almost everything we do. Microsoft and the com- puter industry will only succeed in that world if CIOs, consumers and everyone else sees that Microsoft has created a platform for Trustworthy Computing. Every week there are reports of newly discovered security problems in all kinds of soft- ware, from individual applications and services to Windows, Linux, Unix and other platforms. We have done a great job of having teams work around the clock to deliver security fixes for any problems that arise. Our responsiveness has been unmatched—but as an industry leader we can and must do better. Our new design approaches need to dramatically reduce the number of such issues that come up in the software that Micro- soft, its partners and its customers create. We need to make it automatic for customers to get the benefits of these fixes. Eventually, our software should be so fundamentally secure that customers never even worry about it.7TwC remains a central tenet underlying every aspect of business at Microsoft, guiding thecompany’s focus on security, privacy, reliability, and positive business practices.8

7 To read the full memo, visit http://www.microsoft.com/about/companyinformation/timeline/timeline/docs/bp_Trustworthy.rtf.8 For more information about Trustworthy Computing, visit http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/twc.

23Microsoft Security Intelligence Report

At the heart of Microsoft’s TwC security efforts is the Security Development Lifecycle, a methodology that integrates principles of security into every phase of the software development life cycle. Since 2004, use of the SDL has been a mandatory policy at Microsoft, and it has been revised and updated several times. The SDL portal, at http:// www.microsoft.com/sdl, offers extensive information that software development teams everywhere can use to learn about and implement the process, including training materi- als, process guidance, tools and templates for Microsoft Visual Studio®, and more. As a result of the TwC initiative and the SDL, and of similar efforts implemented by other software vendors, the computing experience is much different—and much safer—in 2009 than it was in 1999. Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2), released in 2004, was a major update that introduced an array of new security features, including the Windows Security Center, the improved Windows Firewall, a pop-up blocker in Internet Explorer, and a range of configuration changes to services and programs that helped to make the operating system more secure by default. Data Execution Prevention (DEP) helps prevent exploits that take advantage of buffer overflows, a common technique, when used with CPUs that support it. Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 introduced additional security fea- tures, such as User Account Control (UAC) and Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR) that made it more difficult for exploits to succeed. Antivirus protection, once considered optional, is increasingly seen as a necessary precaution for Internet users. Over the last 10 years, as malware creators have developed techniques to evade detection by antivirus software, most antivirus vendors have increased the frequency with which they issue definition updates, initially from monthly to weekly, and then to daily or even more often. Microsoft began providing basic anti-malware protection in early 2005 with the Malicious Software Removal Tool, which is released monthly through Windows Update and Microsoft Update at no cost to registered users of Windows, and removes more than 100 common malware families from infected comput- ers. Since then, Microsoft has developed and released a range of products and tools that provide basic to enterprise-level protection against malware and potentially unwanted software, including Windows Defender, Windows Live OneCare, the Microsoft Forefront line of products, and the upcoming Microsoft Security Essentials. (For more information, see “Appendix C: Data Sources,” on page 223.)

Government and Law Enforcement

For their part, government and law-enforcement agencies around the world have had to devote a considerable amount of effort to build a legal infrastructure to successfully deter and respond to cybercrime. Many of the laws that are being used today against malware creators, spammers, and phishers have been written within the last 10 years, as govern- ments around the world have worked to keep up with what are, in many cases, entirely new classes of criminal activity. For example, 18 U.S.C. 1030, the U.S. federal statute that addresses fraud and related activity in connection with computers, was amended in 2008

24 January through June 2009

to specifically cover bot-herding, an activity that did not even exist a decade ago. Evenunderstanding the details of a typical malware-related crime requires a depth of technicalknowledge that traditionally has not been a part of prosecutor and law-enforcement train-ing. Law enforcement’s ability to track down and capture perpetrators is further hamperedby cybercriminals’ skill at covering their tracks and in cases where criminals are physicallylocated beyond the reach of cooperating agencies.Many countries/regions have dedicated law enforcement and investigative resources tofighting computer crime. The International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL)and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime have developed initiatives to train law-enforcement officers about cybercrime and to facilitate cooperation across borders. In theUnited States, several departments and agencies of the federal government have dedicatedteams working on the issue, including the FBI, the U.S. Secret Service, and other groupswithin the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security. Law-enforcement agencies atthe state and local level also often have computer crime specialists who share informationand aid investigations. In the United Kingdom, the Metropolitan Police Service (ScotlandYard) in London and the Serious Organised Crimes Agency coordinate much of that coun-try’s response to cybercrime. National police forces in Germany, the Netherlands, Japan,Singapore, Australia, and many other countries/regions have computer crime units staffedby knowledgeable specialists who are able to quickly respond to new threats as they arise.The Convention on Cybercrime, a treaty drafted by the Council of Europe (CoE) in 2001and ratified by 13 CoE member states and the United States (as of 2009), has been a significantmilestone in improving cooperation, investigation, and prosecution of computer crimeacross national boundaries.9At Microsoft, the Internet Safety Enforcement Team (ISET), part of the Legal and Cor-porate Affairs (LCA) department, works with these and other law-enforcement agenciesaround the world to track down malware creators and bring them to justice. At the sametime, the team works with lawmakers to craft new legislation that addresses the uniquedetails of computer crime and helps ensure that appropriate laws are in place to punishwrongdoers. Since its formation in 2003, ISET has supported hundreds of criminal andcivil enforcement actions worldwide against spammers, phishers, and distributors of spy-ware and other malicious code. ISET has also engaged with the Federal Trade Commission(FTC) and attorneys general in several U.S. states to investigate and pursue cybercriminals.ISET works to ensure that governments and law-enforcement agencies receive the appro-priate tools, necessary training, and extensive technical and investigative support to assistin their efforts to combat global cybercrime and work to make the Internet a safer place foreveryone.Since 2004, ISET has managed the International Botnet Task Force, a worldwide organi-zation of computer-security professionals in industry, academia, and law enforcement.Among other accomplishments, the International Botnet Task Force has provided assis-

9 For more information about the Convention on Cybercrime, see http://conventions.coe.int/Treaty/EN/Treaties/Html/185.htm.

25Microsoft Security Intelligence Report

tance to the FBI, part of the U.S. Department of Justice, in the execution of Operation Bot Roast, an FBI effort to shut down botnets and bring their operators to justice.10

Community-Based Defense With so many software vendors and government agencies working on different aspects of computer crime, and given the global nature of the problem, effective communication and cooperation—among vendors, between government and industry, and across borders and jurisdictional lines—are of paramount importance in stopping threats and punishing their perpetrators. To accomplish this, software developers, government agencies, academia, and independent security researchers have come together to form collaborative groups and initiatives dedicated to fighting different aspects of the common problem. One of the earliest examples of a comprehensive collaborative effort related to Internet security was the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT; now called the CERT Coordination Center, or CERT-CC), founded in response to the so-called “Morris worm,” which infected a large percentage of the computers on the Internet in November 1988. Headquartered at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, CERT was created to give experts a central point for coordinating responses to network emergencies. Other teams, also called CERTs (or CSIRTs, for Computer Security Incident Response Teams), were soon formed around the world to respond to incidents involving particular organizations or geographic areas. To facilitate communication and coordination between these response teams, the Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams (FIRST) was formed in 1990. Today FIRST has almost 200 members in 45 countries/regions, represent- ing enterprise, academia, government, and regional CERTs. In addition to threat response, CERTs often provide valuable information and assistance to others in the security com- munity. For example, US-CERT, part of the United States federal government, sponsors the National Vulnerability Database (NVD) (http://nvd.nist.gov), a comprehensive repository of information about software vulnerabilities. In addition to FIRST, Microsoft participates in a number of collaborative organizations and initiatives dedicated to different aspects of the overall computer security issue, including: ◆◆ The Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG), a global pan-industrial and law- enforcement association focused on eliminating the fraud and identity theft that result from phishing and related techniques. In addition to coordinating information shar- ing and response between partners, the APWG provides guidance to end users to help them avoid falling victim to phishing scams. ◆◆ The Anti-Spyware Coalition (ASC), a group of antispyware software companies, academics, and consumer groups dedicated to building a consensus about definitions and best practices in the debate surrounding spyware and other potentially unwanted 10 For more in-depth information about some of these legal actions and initiatives, see “Focus on Internet Safety Enforcement,” in Microsoft Security Intelligence Report, Volume 4 (July through December 2007), beginning on page 84, and “Legal Action Against Rogues,” in Microsoft Security Intelligence Report, Volume 6 (July through December 2008), beginning on page 99.

Kaspersky Lab in Zango v. Kaspersky, a landmark case heard by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on February 2, 2009. Zango, Inc., a vendor of potentially unwanted software, accused Kaspersky of unlawfully blocking several of its programs. On June 25, 2009, the court ruled in favor of Kaspersky’s right to classify software as adware and to filter or block it on that basis.◆◆ Digital PhishNet, a collaborative enforcement operation to unite industry leaders in technology, banking, financial services, and online retail services with law enforce- ment to combat phishing.◆◆ The Industry Consortium for Advancement of Security on the Internet (ICASI), an organization formed in June 2008 by Microsoft, Cisco Systems, IBM, Intel, Juniper Networks, and Nokia. ICASI was created to give global IT vendors a secure forum for sharing sensitive information with each other to facilitate proactive responses to security threats.◆◆ The Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group (MAAWG), a global organization focus- ing on preserving electronic messaging from online exploits and abuse with the goal of enhancing user trust and confidence, while ensuring the deliverability of legitimate messages. MAAWG works to address messaging abuse by focusing on technology, industry collaboration, and public policy initiatives.◆◆ The National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA), a public-private partnership between the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), corporate sponsors, and non- profit collaborators to promote cyber security awareness for home users, small and medium-sized businesses, and primary and secondary education. The NCSA maintains StaySafeOnline.org, a Web site that provides computer safety information to home users, primary school educators, and small businesses and promotes National Cyber Security Awareness Month in the United States.◆◆ Cybercrime Centres of Excellence Network for Training, Research and Education (2CENTRE), a new project supporting the creation of national Centres of Excellence in IT Forensics and Cybercrime Investigation in European countries/regions, to partner with a Network Coordination Centre to be established in a European Union member state. The 2CENTRE project was announced at the Cybercrime Conference of the Council of Europe in March 2009. Project commencement is expected to begin in early 2010.From time to time, these groups themselves unite to spearhead efforts like the Chain ofTrust Initiative, launched in May 2009 by the NCSA, the ASC, and StopBadware.org. TheChain of Trust Initiative is intended to strengthen the links between security vendors,researchers, government agencies, Internet companies, network providers, advocacygroups, and education groups in a systemic effort to fight malware.

27Microsoft Security Intelligence Report

Recognizing the important role the security response community plays in Microsoft’s own security efforts, the company formed the Microsoft Security Response Alliance (MSRA) in 2006 as a framework for partners, vendors, governments, and infrastructure providers to collaborate in a secure and timely manner. The MSRA serves as an umbrella organization for a number of other alliances and initiatives, several of which predate the formation of the MSRA itself. For example, the Microsoft Virus Initiative (MVI) was originally formed in 1997 to facilitate communication between Microsoft and antivirus (AV) software ven- dors about macro viruses, which led to the development of the Antivirus application programming interface (Antivirus API) supported by Microsoft Office applications to the present day. Figure 2 lists the MSRA member organizations and what they do. Figure 2. Organizations and working groups under the MSRA umbrella

Organization Focus Purpose

The Global Infrastructure Internet service providers Fosters cooperation between Microsoft and the Alliance for Internet Safety (ISPs) world’s leading ISPs to keep their customers (GIAIS) safe on the Internet

Microsoft Security Public sector infrastructure, Provides a framework for information exchange Cooperation Program (SCP) law enforcement, public and collaboration between Microsoft and the safety, and education public sector, primarily in the areas of response and outreach

Groups and initiatives such as these, along with security conferences such as Black Hat and CanSecWest, contribute to what Microsoft has called community-based defense: a strategy for creating a more secure environment for everyone that involves collaboration, sharing best practices, and making investments in security and defense knowledge. The reaction of the worldwide security community in late 2008 and early 2009 to a new, highly aggressive threat is a strong indicator of the effectiveness of this approach.

28 January through June 2009

Case Study: The Conficker Working Group

The appearance in late 2008 of Win32/Conficker, an aggressive and technically complexnew family of worms, posed a serious challenge to security responders and others chargedwith ensuring the safety of the world’s computer systems and data. (“Win32/ConfickerUpdate,” beginning on page 95, explains the technical details of the Conficker worm andthe methods it uses to propagate.) Working together, however, the security community wasable to react quickly to the threat and contain much of the damage, in the process estab-lishing a potentially groundbreaking template for future cooperative response efforts.On October 23, 2008, Microsoft released critical security update MS08-067, addressingCVE-2008-4250, a vulnerability in the Windows Server service that could allow maliciouscode to spread silently between vulnerable computers across the Internet. The vulnerabilityaffected most currently supported versions of Windows, although architectural improve-ments in Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 made them more difficult to exploitthan earlier versions. Like the worms that plagued the Internet earlier this decade, mal-ware that exploited the vulnerability would be able to spread without user interaction bytaking advantage of the protocols computers use to communicate with each other acrossnetworks. For this reason, and because actual attack code that exploited the vulnerabilitywas known to exist in the wild at the time, the MSRC took the unusual step of releasingMS08-067 “out of band” rather than wait for the next scheduled release of Microsoftsecurity updates, which takes place on the second Tuesday of every month. SecurityBulletin MS08-067 happened to be released on the last day of the eighth annual meeting ofthe International Botnet Task Force in Arlington, Virginia, a suburb of Washington, D.C.,where attendees agreed to closely monitor developments around what appeared to be thefirst legitimately “wormable” vulnerability to be discovered in Windows in several years.The November appearance of Win32/Conficker, the first significant worm that exploitedthe MS08-067 vulnerability, marked a major challenge for security researchers, due to theaggressive tactics several of its variants used to propagate. Despite this, researchers soondiscovered a way to limit or eliminate the Conficker bot-herders’ ability to issue instruc-tions to infected computers. As described on page 96, the authors of the Conficker malwareused an algorithm to generate 500 new domain names every day (250 for each of the firsttwo Conficker variants discovered) to use for command-and-control servers. Computersinfected with Conficker would attempt to contact each of these generated domain namesevery day. If the authors had a task they wanted the computers in the botnet to perform,they would simply use the same algorithm to generate domain names in advance and reg-ister a few of them, which they could then use to host command-and-control servers.Fortunately, researchers from Microsoft and other organizations were able to reverse-engineer the domain-name-generation algorithms used by the first two variants, desig-nated Worm:Win32/Conficker.A and Worm:Win32/Conficker.B, soon after each variantwas discovered. This enabled them to begin registering the domain names before thebotnet operators could, thereby impeding the Conficker malware from obtaining new

29Microsoft Security Intelligence Report

instructions. Initially, the researchers resorted to registering the domains commercially

through the domain name registrars for the eight top-level domains (TLDs) (.com, .net, .org, .info, .biz, .ws, .cn, and .cc) used by Conficker, an approach that quickly became unworkable. Registering 500 domain names per day would cost thousands of (U.S.) dollars per day for the foreseeable future—and the cost would only increase if new variants appeared using different name-generation algorithms. It was clear that more help would be needed.

The Conficker Working Group Is Born

In January 2009, representatives from a number of security research companies and domain registrars, along with the anti-botnet Shadowserver Foundation, began discuss- ing how best to implement a defensive Domain Name Service (DNS) strategy to handle domain registrations. To coordinate the significant amount of e-mail being generated by these discussions, the group established the CONFICKER e-mailing list on January 28, which drew a growing number of security researchers and members from law enforce- ment, academia, and industry, in addition to members representing each of the eight TLDs used by Conficker. Enlisting the support of the TLD operators would prove to be a vital step in containing the Conficker threat, enabling the group to block domain names more efficiently and at far less expense than would be possible through the commercial regis- tration process. By early February 2009, working group members had instituted a process for registering as many domain names as possible, before the Conficker operators could register them, and assigning them to IP addresses belonging to six sinkholes (server complexes designed to absorb and analyze malware traffic) operated by organizations belonging to the working group. Infected computers looking for command-and-control servers would contact the sinkholes instead, providing researchers with valuable telemetry for analyzing the spread of the worm. A number of Internet service providers (ISPs) were also able to use this telemetry data to identify infected computers. Around the same time, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which is responsible for allocating IP addresses and managing the Internet domain name system, invited the group to deliver a presenta- tion on its domain registration efforts to a meeting of the ICANN board of directors. The board expressed its support for the program and assigned two staffers to help coordinate it. Despite these efforts, the Conficker operators were still able to register some domains before the working group could get to them. To mitigate this, researchers at Kaspersky Lab, an anti-malware vendor headquartered in Russia, worked with OpenDNS, a free network resolution service used by many organizations and individuals, to compute a year’s worth of Conficker domain names and proactively point them at the group’s sinkholes. Any infected computer belonging to an OpenDNS user would not be able to contact any of the Conficker command-and-control servers, even on domains the Conficker operators had been able to secure.

30 January through June 2009

The formation of the Conficker Working Group (CWG) was officially announced to thepublic on February 12, 2009, as what a number of news stories characterized as an unprec-edented example of global cooperation in the computer security industry, and a potentialblueprint for dealing with threats in the future. The CWG had grown from an e-mail listfor nine individuals to a group of more than 30 member organizations from around theworld, coordinating complex activities through a robust communications infrastructure.On the day the CWG was announced, the group had successfully registered every Con-ficker domain name for the next 10 days, a genuine—if temporary—victory over the Con-ficker operators.

Setbacks and Triumphs

The domain registration task became exponentially more challenging on March 4, 2009,with the discovery of Worm:Win32/Conficker.D. Investigators reverse-engineered the newvariant and determined that it was programmed to generate 50,000 new domain namesa day across 110 TLDs, beginning on April 1, 2009. Though this seemed at first like animpossible hurdle to overcome, CWG members immediately began working to counter the effectsof the upcoming change. As security researchers continued to analyze the Conficker.Dmalware, ICANN staffers began contacting the registries responsible for each of theaffected TLDs seeking cooperation in registering or blocking the domains, and the CWGcompiled “go packs” of information for Internet service providers and enterprises aboutthe steps they should take to help keep their customers and employees safe.April 1, 2009, came and went, with the world outside the security community noticinglittle or no change. By that time, however, ICANN had secured the cooperation of all 110TLDs used by Conficker, and the global DNS community was active and prepared to dealwith the Conficker threat. Rapid, effective collaboration across borders and organizationallines had proven instrumental in containing what has been, and remains, a significantthreat to the world’s computers and information.

The CWG Today

The CWG remains in place today, with more than 300 member organizations representinglaw enforcement, academia, and industry, and remains vigilant against new developments.In cooperation with ICANN and the DNS community, the CWG continues to block orregister the 50,000 domain names generated each day by the Conficker algorithms. Eachmonth the group supplies the 110 affected TLD operators with an updated list of generateddomain names covering the next several months, so they can begin implementing counter-measures well in advance. Automated mechanisms verify that each domain name has beenblocked before it is scheduled to be used and alert the CWG for any that have not, so activityfor those domains can be closely monitored. Once in a while, a domain name generated bythe algorithm happens to correspond to an existing domain owned by a legitimate party;

31Microsoft Security Intelligence Report

in such cases, the CWG contacts the legitimate domain owner in advance and offers assis- tance managing the expected spike in traffic coming from infected computers. In March, the group underwent a reorganization process to add structure and to seg- ment its work by subject area to work more effectively. The group maintains a Web site at http://www.confickerworkinggroup.org with links to information in multiple languages about Conficker and resources that service providers and end users can use to determine if they are infected, and if so, what to do about it. The fight against Conficker is not over. The five identified variants continue to spread to new computers due to a lack of information or action on the part of some system admin- istrators and end users. Even after Conficker recedes into insignificance, there will likely be other threats of similar magnitude to deal with in the future. As such threats appear, though, collaborative efforts, such as the CWG, can provide the global security community with unequaled tools for mitigation and resolution.

32 January through June 2009

Strategies, Mitigations, and Countermeasures

attack vectors uncovered in this report. Examples might include practices dictated by standards such as ISO/IEC 27000, Control Objectives for Information and related Technology (COBIT), or the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council (PCI SSC). Regardless, the ability to effectively take advantage of a risk management methodology is a key success driver. The Microsoft Security Risk Management Guide (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc163143.aspx) provides both a qualita- tive and quantitative risk analysis of your environment.◆◆ Limit exposure by not sharing administrator accounts and by enforcing the concept of separation of duties, by both role and by department. In situations involving high- value assets, consider the split-password approach, where each administrator has a por- tion of the password and two or more must be present for system logon. In addition, enable Object Access auditing for items associated with the administrator accounts, so that actions can be monitored.◆◆ Enforce the idea of least privilege, wherein computer accounts are given only those permissions required to perform a job function. Administrators sometimes tend to configure accounts with maximum rights to save time later.◆◆ Ensure that your antivirus product is configured to scan removable media storage devices upon connection. Many threats execute via “virtual CD drives” that run directly from such devices.◆◆ Better protect your whole ecosystem by ensuring that your home computers are secure, as well as your business computers. Consider using Microsoft Security Essentials (http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/) to provide real-time protection for your home computers, at no charge to licensed users of Windows.◆◆ Understand that SQL injection attacks can affect any database that is ANSI-99 compli- ant. Most commercial and open-source databases support this standard. Ensure that input validation is being conducted as data arrives, not only from Web forms but also from data being imported from remote sources, such as partners or vendors.◆◆ Drive security awareness by helping users understand that reputable antivirus providers do not leverage browser pop-up advertisements to promote their products. Users should immediately close any such ads to prevent infection and should understand that using such solutions may actually prevent real antivirus products from doing their jobs.◆◆ Ensure that the signature files for your antivirus solution are up to date and are auto- matically updated with regularity.

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◆◆ Stay informed! You must be aware of the threat landscape around you. Information security is a rapidly changing environment, so it’s important to keep up with the latest happenings in both the wider industry and in your specific vertical market (such as healthcare or manufacturing). Consider joining one of the many industry associa- tions—like the Information Systems Security Association (ISSA), the Information Systems Audit and Control Association (ISACA), the Information Security Forum (ISF), or Infragard—so you can stay aware of the latest information. Are you aware of the legislation (such as CAN-SPAM) that affects your business? ◆◆ Work with your local law-enforcement agencies. If you think you may have been a victim of an attack, or if you suspect something unusual on your network, you should contact law enforcement for assistance. Establishing a good working relationship with your local law-enforcement officers is key to a successful incident-response program. ◆◆ Stay up to date on the Microsoft security world by using the Trustworthy Computing blog aggregator at http://www.microsoft.com/twc/blogs.

34 Microsoft Malware Protection Center

The Microsoft Malware Protection Center is the group at Microsoft that researches and respondsto malware and potentially unwanted software. The MMPC provides the Microsoft Malware Pro-tection Engine, the technology that underlines Microsoft security products and services such as theMalicious Software Removal Tool, Windows Defender, Forefront Client Security, the SmartScreenFilter in Internet Explorer 8, and (beginning in 2H09) Microsoft Security Essentials. The MicrosoftMalware Protection Engine relies on constantly updated definition files containing detection signa-tures for thousands of different malware and potentially unwanted software families. To develop thesedefinition files and to respond quickly and effectively to new threats, the MMPC maintains researchand response labs in the United States, Ireland, and Australia, with additional researchers in otherlocations.

The MMPC uses a number of different mechanisms to disseminate malware and security informationto the public. The center maintains the MMPC Portal (http://www.microsoft.com/security/portal),a central source for malware and security information, definition updates, and malware samplesubmissions. The MMPC Portal includes an encyclopedia that provides detailed analyses of thou-sands of current threats, including technical information about the threat, how readers can tell ifthey are infected, and how to recover from the threat or avoid exposure to it altogether. (The threatdescriptions that appear in marginal callouts throughout this report are condensed from the MMPCportal encyclopedia). MMPC researchers also publish a blog at http://blogs.technet.com/mmpc,which they use to communicate with the public directly about topics such as current malware out-breaks, security conferences, and other security-related issues.Microsoft Security Intelligence Report

Malware and Potentially Unwanted Software Trends

E xcept where specified, the data in this section has been compiled from telemetry generated from hundreds of millions of computers worldwide by a number of different Microsoft security tools and services, including the MSRT, Windows Live OneCare, the Windows Live OneCare safety scanner, Windows Defender, Microsoft Forefront products, and Microsoft Forefront Online Protec- tion for Exchange (FOPE; formerly Forefront Online Security for Exchange, or FOSE). See “Appendix C: Data Sources,” beginning on page 223, for more information on these tools.

Threat Naming Conventions

The MMPC malware naming standard is derived from the Computer Antivirus Research Organization (CARO) Malware Naming Scheme, originally published in 1991 and revised in 2002. Most security vendors use naming conventions based on the CARO scheme, with minor variations, although family and variant names for the same threat can differ between vendors. A threat name can contain some or all of the components seen in Figure 3. Figure 3. The Microsoft malware naming conventions

The type indicates the primary function or intent of the threat. The MMPC assigns each individual threat to one of a few dozen different types based on a number of factors, including how the threat spreads and what it is designed to do. To simplify the presentation of this information and make it easier to understand, the Security Intelligence Report groups these types into 10 categories. For example, the TrojanDownloader and TrojanDropper types are combined into a single category, called Trojan Downloaders & Droppers. The platform indicates the operating environment in which the threat is designed to run and spread. For most of the threats described in this report, the platform is listed as “Win32,” for the Win32 API used by 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows desktop and server operating systems. (Not all Win32 threats can run on every version of Windows, however.) Platforms can include programming languages and file formats, in addition to operating systems. For example, threats in the ASX/Wimad family are designed for programs that parse the Advanced Stream Redirector (ASX) file format, regardless of operating system.

36 January through June 2009

Groups of closely related threats are organized into families, which are given unique namesto distinguish them from others. The family name is usually not related to anything themalware author has chosen to call the threat; researchers use a variety of techniques toname new families, such as excerpting and modifying strings of alphabetic charactersfound in the malware file. Security vendors usually try to adopt the name used by the firstvendor to positively identify a new family, although sometimes different vendors use com-pletely different names for the same threat, which can happen when two or more vendorsdiscover a new family independently. The MMPC Encyclopedia (http://www.microsoft.com/security/portal) lists the names used by other major security vendors to identify eachthreat, when known.Some malware families include multiple components that perform different tasks and areassigned different types. For example, the Win32/Frethog family includes variants desig-nated PWS:Win32/Frethog.C and TrojanDownloader:Win32/Frethog.C, among others.In the Security Intelligence Report, the category listed for a particular family is the one thatMicrosoft security analysts have determined to be the most significant category for thefamily (which, in the case of Frethog, is Password Stealers & Monitoring Tools).Malware creators often release multiple variants for a family, typically in an effort to avoidbeing detected by security software. Variants are designated by letters, which are assignedin order of discovery: A through Z, then AA through AZ, then BA through BZ, and so on.A variant designation of “gen” indicates that the threat was detected by a generic signaturefor the family rather than as a specific variant. Any additional characters that appear afterthe variant provide comments or additional information.In the Security Intelligence Report, a threat name consisting of a platform and family name(like “Win32/Conficker”) is a reference to a family. When a longer threat name is given(like “Worm:Win32/Conficker.B!inf ”), it is a reference to a more specific signature or to anindividual variant. To make the report easier to read, family and variant names have occa-sionally been abbreviated in contexts where confusion is unlikely. Thus, Win32/Conficker isreferred to simply as Conficker on subsequent mention in some places, and Worm:Win32/Conficker.B simply as Conficker.B.

Infection Rates and CCM

To produce a consistent measure of infection that can be used to compare different popu-lations of computers to each other, infection rates in this report are expressed using ametric called computers cleaned per thousand, or CCM, which represents the number ofcomputers cleaned for every 1,000 executions of the MSRT. (The M in CCM stands formille, the Latin word for thousand.) For example, if the MSRT has 50,000 executions in aparticular location in July and removes infections from 200 computers, the CCM infectionrate for that location in July is 4.0 (200 ÷ 50,000 × 1,000). A new version of the MSRT isreleased every month, so figures for multiple months, or for 1H09 as a whole, are derived

37Microsoft Security Intelligence Report

by averaging the CCM for each month in the period. The MSRT data is used because the tool’s global reach, large installed base, and regularly scheduled release facilitate the com- parison of relative infection rates between different populations of computers.

Geographic Trends The telemetric data generated by Microsoft security products includes information about the location of the system, as determined by the setting of the Location tab or menu in Regional and Language Options in the Control Panel. This data makes it possible to com- pare infection rates, patterns, and trends in different locations around the world. (“Appen- dix B: Threat Assessments for Individual Locations,” beginning on page 181, includes more in-depth information about the threat landscapes in many of the locations listed here.) Figure 4. The 25 locations with the most computers cleaned by Microsoft desktop anti-malware products in 1H09

As Figure 4 shows, the number of computers cleaned in individual countries/regions can

vary quite a bit from period to period. The largest increase in this figure is the 67.3 percentrise in Taiwan, which is due in part to increased detections of several password stealersthat target players of online games, such as Win32/Taterf, Win32/Frethog, and Win32/Corripio. (For more information about this class of threat, see “Online Gaming-RelatedFamilies,” on page 62 of Microsoft Security Intelligence Report, Volume 5 (January throughJune 2008).) The largest decline in this figure is the 31.4 percent decrease in Sweden, whichis due in part to a decline in the prevalence of a number of older families without a com-mensurate rise in newer threats.Despite the global nature of the Internet, there are significant differences in the types ofthreats that affect users in different parts of the world. “Ten Years of Malware and Secu-rity Threats, 1999–2009,” beginning on page 18, explains how the malware ecosystem hasmoved away from highly visible threats, like self-replicating worms, toward less visiblethreats that rely more on social engineering. This shift means that the spread and effective-ness of malware have become more dependent on language and cultural factors. Somethreats are spread using techniques that target people who speak a particular languageor who use services that are local to a particular geographic region. Others target vulner-abilities or operating system configurations and applications that are unequally distributedaround the globe. As a result, security researchers face a threat landscape that is muchmore complex than a simple examination of the biggest threats worldwide would suggest.Infection data from several Microsoft security products for some of the more populouslocations around the world demonstrates the highly localized nature of malware andpotentially unwanted software. Figure 5 shows the relative prevalence of different catego-ries of malware and potentially unwanted software in the eight locations with the mostcomputers cleaned in 1H09, expressed as percentages of the total number of computerscleaned in each location. (The sum of the infection rates for each location may exceed

39Microsoft Security Intelligence Report

100 percent because some computers have more than one category of threat removed from them during each time period.) See page 48 for an explanation of the categories used in this figure. Figure 5. Threat categories worldwide and in the eight locations with the most infected computers, by incidence among all computers cleaned by Microsoft desktop anti-malware products, 1H09

◆◆ In the United States and the United Kingdom, Miscellaneous Trojans account for Encyclopedia the largest single category of threat. The United States and United Kingdom typically display similar mixes of threat categories, with families such as Win32/Alureon and Win32/Alureon: A data-stealing trojan that gathers confidential Win32/Vundo relatively common in both locations. Nevertheless, there are also some information such as user names, significant differences in the lists of prevalent families in each location. For example, passwords, and credit card data from incoming and outgoing Win32/FakeXPA, the most prevalent family in the United States in 1H09, was a distant Internet traffic. It may also sixth in the United Kingdom. download malicious data and modify DNS settings. ◆◆ France and Italy also display similar threat landscapes. The top threat in both loca- Win32/FakeXPA: A rogue security tions by a wide margin was the Miscellaneous Trojans family Win32/Wintrim, which software family that claims to scan has a strong presence in Western Europe but is seen much less often elsewhere. for malware and then demands that the user pay to remove non- ◆◆ In China, many of the most prevalent families are Chinese-language threats that don’t existent threats. Some variants unlawfully use Microsoft logos and appear in the list of top threats for any other location, such as the browser modifier trademarks. Win32/BaiduSobar,11 or password stealers that target players of online games, includ- http://www.microsoft.com/av ing Win32/Lolyda and Win32/Frethog. 11 Figures do not include newer versions of the Baidu Sobar software, which no longer exhibits the behaviors Microsoft uses to classify software as potentially unwanted.

40 January through June 2009

◆◆ The threat landscape in Brazil is dominated by Portuguese-language password stealers

that target online users of Brazilian banks, led by Win32/Bancos, the most prevalent Encyclopedia malware threat in Brazil. Win32/Wintrim: A family of trojans◆◆ Though widely separated both geographically and culturally, Spain and Korea are that display pop-up advertisements depending on the user’s keywords both dominated by worms, led by Win32/Taterf, which targets players of online and browsing history. Its variants games. The prevalence of Taterf in Korea may be due in part to the worm’s propensity can monitor the user’s activities, download applications, and send to spread easily in Internet cafés and LAN gaming centers, which are popular in Korea. system information back to a See “Online Gaming-Related Families,” on page 62 of Microsoft Security Intelligence remote server. Report, Volume 5 (January through June 2008), for more information about the meth- Win32/Lolyda: A family of trojans ods of propagation used by Win32/Taterf and related families. that sends account information from popular online games toFigure 6 illustrates the infection rates of locations around the world, expressed in CCM. a remote server. They may also download and execute arbitrary files.See page 37 for an explanation of the CCM metric. http://www.microsoft.com/avFigure 6. Infection rates by country/region in 1H09

Malware Detections by Country/Region (per 1000)

37 + 10 to 13

31 to 37 7 to 10

26 to 31 5 to 7

21 to 26 3 to 5

17 to 21 1.5 to 3 This map illustrates the relative infection rates of differing regions based on 13 to 17 0 to 1.5 the number of infected computers discovered per 1,000 executions of the MSRT. For example, a region colored yellow would have an infection rate of Insufficient data between 7 and 10 computers per 1,000 executions of the MSRT. www.microsoft.com/sir

Figure 7 shows the infection rates in locations around the world with at least 1 millionaverage monthly MSRT executions in 1H09, derived by averaging each location’s monthlyCCM for each of the six months in the period. See “Appendix A: Full Geographic Data,” onpage 172, for a more comprehensive list with 212 locations, and see “Appendix B: Threat

41Microsoft Security Intelligence Report

Assessments for Individual Locations,” beginning on page 181, for an in-depth look at the Encyclopedia threat landscapes for 14 locations around the world, encompassing every inhabited conti- nent and multiple languages and computer usage patterns. Win32/Frethog: A large family of password-stealing trojans Figure 7. Infection rates (CCM) for locations around the world with at least that target confidential data, 1 million average monthly MSRT executions in 1H09 such as account information, from massively multiplayer online games (IMMORPGs). Country/Region CCM (1H09) Country/Region CCM (1H09)

Figure 8 and Figure 9 offer a closer look at these geographic statistics, listing the 25 loca-tions with the lowest infection rates and the 25 locations with the highest infection ratesin 1H09, respectively, among locations with at least 100,000 average monthly MSRTexecutions.Figure 8. Locations with the lowest infection Figure 9. Locations with the highest infectionrates, by CCM, in 1H09 (100,000 monthly MSRT rates, by CCM, in 1H09 (100,000 monthly MSRTexecutions or more) executions or more)

Best Practices Around the World

Over the last several years, a number of countries have consistently exhibited infection rates well below the worldwide average. For this volume of the Security Intelligence Report, Microsoft has asked computer security response professionals representing four of these countries to comment about why they believe this to be so and about the best practices their countries follow to keep their residents and resources safe from computer threats.

Austria Leon Aaron Kaplan, National Computer Emergency Response Team of Austria (http://www.cert.at/) Austria has roughly 8.2 million inhabitants possessing 9.8 mobile phones. It is often regarded as a “testing grounds” for new mobile phone services, especially UMTS. It is industrially highly developed, achieving 15th place in the Human Development Index (2007/2008).12 The Internet sector is well developed, with DSL and cable being the predominant form of access. It has roughly 5.5 million Internet users as of June/08 which equates to 67% of the population, according to a study by the GfK Group. However, Austria is not the birthplace of the IT industry, nor does it have its own Silicon Valley. We might expect the level of IT know-how and security awareness to be about average, and not as high as in some other IT hot spots of the world. So why does Austria have such a low CCM score? One potential explanation could be that the “market” is too small, and malware authors prefer to target Germany (a country with 80 million inhabitants) instead of Austria. However, this argument only holds for localized attacks such as phishing. For non-localized malware. such as worms and viruses, an IP address is an IP address, no matter if it is in Austria or not. Another factor affecting overall IT security seems to be a small and close-knit network of working relationships between technicians working at ISPs. CERT.at employs many people who formerly worked at large ISPs. A takedown request for a website hosting malware is often therefore just a cell phone call away from the right technician. Therefore the window of opportunity for phishing or malware hosting is small in Austria.

Encyclopedia Furthermore, many ISPs have strong IT security enforcement policies. For example, the largest Austrian consumer ISP will disconnect a residential customer if a problem caused by Win32/Conficker: A worm that spreads by exploiting a malware on the customer’s computer (such as spam) persists for a week. vulnerability addressed by Security While CERT.at was monitoring the Win32/Conficker worm we came across a very Bulletin MS08-067. Some variants also spread via removable drives interesting observation: those countries with low software piracy rates were less affected and by exploiting weak passwords. by Conficker. According to the Business Software Alliance,13 Austria is one of the countries It disables several important system services and security products and 12 United Nations Development Programme. “Human Development Report 2007/2008.” http://hdrstats.undp.org/en/countries/ downloads arbitrary files. data_sheets/cty_ds_AUT.html 13 Business Software Alliance. “Sixth Annual BSA-IDC Global Software Piracy Study.” http://global.bsa.org/globalpiracy2008/ http://www.microsoft.com/av studies/globalpiracy2008.pdf

44 January through June 2009

with the lowest piracy rates worldwide (24 percent, 5th lowest in the world). [Users incountries with high piracy rates are less likely to use Windows Update to receive criticalsecurity updates. For more information about the relationship between piracy rates andusage of Microsoft update services, see “Regional Variations in Update Service Usage,”beginning on page 164.]We believe the low piracy rate, combined with a generally strict IT security enforcement ofISPs and the fact that updates are quickly installed due to fast Internet lines (broadband,cable connection) forms a basis for the generally low infection score in Austria.

FinlandErka Koivunen, Head of Unit, Computer Emergency Response Team, FinnishCommunications Regulatory Authority (http://www.cert.fi)What is it that makes Finnish networks so safe? A couple of things comes to mind, and thenone unavoidable conclusion.First, the capability to detect needs to be complemented with the ability to take action.CERT-FI has tasked itself with concretely reaching out and finding factual technicalinformation about malicious events taking place in Finland, out of Finland, or towardsFinland. As it turns out, there are a plethora of community-driven projects gauging thelevel of malicious activity all over the internet: honeynets, darknets, log repositories,automated malware analysis tools, and others. What’s common for the majority of them isthat the findings just sit in databases, with nobody trying to get rid of the troublemakers.Most of the projects are just dying to send the reports out to someone who would takecare of finding the compromised ICT systems and helping the victims. Our automatedtool, CERT-FI Autoreporter, downloads these reports en masse, anonymises the sources,determines the responsible Finnish network admins, and proceeds to let them know aboutthe breaches, so they can take action.Second, the lifetime of the malware infections and security breaches needs to be cut down.The general attitude among Finnish network admins is that it’s in their own and theircustomers’ interests to act quickly once the reports hit their desks. It saves helpdesk costs,cuts down the amount of malicious traffic, and helps increase customer confidence. As aresult, the infected computers get treated fast or risk losing connectivity. Botnet controllers andmalware distribution sites have proven to have a hard time staying online in Finnish networks.Third, the positive regulative atmosphere regarding sensible information security…. Thereare clear and pragmatic provisions in Finnish legislation granting network admins theright (and at times an obligation) to defend their networks and interconnected IT systemsagainst breaches of technical information security…. The rules start with administrativeengagement: appointing responsible network security admins and the so-called abusehelpdesks to handle complaints is mandatory. The more technical stuff includes provisionssuch as exercising what we call “address hygiene” in core networks (e.g., filtering spoofed Continued on next page...

45Microsoft Security Intelligence Report

and source-routed packets) and restricting broadband subscribers’ ability to send spam or participate in denial-of-service attacks. There are also a requirement for ISPs to inform their subscribers about the possible dangers of the Internet and ways to mitigate them. As a side effect, this has greatly boosted the purchase of security software by private consumers. As a result of all this, the number of “malicious” events in Finnish networks hasn’t exceeded the growth of the connected users in the past couple of years. Needless to say, we need to be constantly vigilant and adapt our posture to the changes in the security landscape. This will require some excellent navigation skills in the future, we know. Ah, the Unavoidable Conclusion I mentioned earlier. While we acknowledge that the Finnish networks appear to be clean, at the same time we understand that this doesn’t necessarily make Finland any better prepared for a possible cyber attack than anyone else. We are just less likely to cause headaches for everybody else. In this sense, the description of Earth in the [Douglas Adams] book The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy fits Finland quite nicely as well: “Mostly Harmless.”

Germany Torsten Voss, DFN-CERT (http://www.dfn-cert.de/); Hans-Peter Jedlicka, Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) (http://www.bsi.de/) Germany has a very large CERT community, with more than thirty commercial, government, and academic CERTs organised in the German CERT-Verbund (http://www. cert-verbund.de). Here is how CERT-Bund and DFN-CERT work to keep infection within their constituency low. The federal Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-Bund) is part of the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) as the IT security provider for the German government. Its main task is to strengthen IT security and to mitigate any potential impact on governmental networks. The BSI also works closely with the German ISP community, which identifies botnet infections and informs the owners of infected computers, in some cases even isolating them under quarantine. Additionally, a multitude of different awareness-raising initiatives, conducted by different stakeholders from the government and private sectors, provide information for every interested citizen. This includes efficient warning and alerting services for each of the CERTs’/CSIRTs’ prime constituencies (http://www.cert-bund.de/), but also for the citizens (http://www.buerger-cert.de/). DFN-CERT is the Incidence Response Team for the German Research Network (DFN; http:// www.dfn.de/) and serves the German academic and research community. One major goal of DFN-CERT’s daily work is to actively prevent the distribution of malware in its constituency, resulting in a low malware infection rate.

46 January through June 2009

Besides proactive measures (distribution of information about vulnerabilities and patches),

this includes an important reactive service, which is based on a knowledge of IP addressranges and security contacts in the constituency. It consists of the following three steps:1. Collection of information about suspicious traffic, either from other CERTs or from the DFN-CERT systems (e.g. honeypots, darknets).2. Cross-referencing of this information with IP addresses in the constituency, which yields knowledge about which site has a problem with a certain machine or IP address.3. Contacting the sites directly and give them detailed reports. This way local security contacts can act quickly, check their systems, and avoid the further spread of malware.

JapanHideaki Kobayashi and Toshiaki Kokado, Information-Technology Promotion Agency,Japan (http://www.ipa.go.jp)One of the reasons [that the infection rate in Japan is lower than in many other countries]is that Cyber Clean Center (https://www.ccc.go.jp/), a cooperative project between ISPs(76 companies as of June 2009), major security vendors (7 companies, including Microsoft),and Japanese government agencies, has worked on educating users and helping themremove infections from their computers. Thanks to this effort, we have succeeded inreducing the number of computers infected by botnet malware to 1 percent in June 2008,from 2.5 percent in April 2005. At the same time, we have contributed to improving thedetection rate of malware on users’ computers by providing security vendors with samplescollected by honey pots.However, this is just part of a long-term effort for IPA, which was established in 1970 by theJapanese Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI).14 The first countermeasurewas a virus consultation service IPA started in 1990. The service provides basic answersfor questions from companies and people, including “What is a virus?” and “My computeris infected. What should I do?”. Information gathered via inquiries, samples, and trendinformation from administrative agencies is provided to security vendors, which leads tospecific actions.For the purpose of preventing virus infection, it is necessary to improve the qualityof software product security, and efforts have been made to reduce the number ofvulnerabilities over the years. For example, over 1.3 million copies of How to Secure YourWebsite, a textbook for building Web sites securely and reducing vulnerabilities in Webapplications, have been downloaded since its release.Apart from that, we have offered a tool that tests for known vulnerabilities in standardprotocols, such as TCP/IP, to development companies for free. Our goal is to provide helpfor developers who are not security specialists, and they have accepted our assistance as14 In 2001, MITI was reorganized into the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI).

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47Microsoft Security Intelligence Report

beneficial to users. IPA and the Japan Computer Emergency Response Team Coordination Center (JPCERT/CC) have also started Japan Vulnerability Notes (JVN) to release information in Japanese on vulnerabilities in both Japanese software and software distributed in Japan, and to provide information for enlightenment and prevention of recurrence. At the same time, we have worked actively on challenges for the future. For example, we have launched an information security workgroup for home information appliances and cars. These activities do not have an immediate effect. However, these government-affiliated agencies have continued their IT lifecycle-wide efforts for years, including providing knowhow for secure software development, and gathering information about current threats and countermeasures against them. These measures have created a high level of awareness about information security among the nation, companies, and the entire population. We believe that this high level of awareness helps make Japan a country with such a low malware infection rate.

Category Trends As explained in “Threat Naming Conventions,” on page 36, the MMPC classifies indi- vidual threats into types based on a number of factors, including how the threat spreads and what it is designed to do. To simplify the presentation of this information and make it easier to understand, the Security Intelligence Report groups these types into 10 categories based on similarities in function and purpose. For example, the TrojanDownloader and TrojanDropper types are combined into a single category, called Trojan Downloaders & Droppers. Malware categories often overlap, and many threat families exhibit characteristics of mul- tiple categories. To produce the information and figures in this section, each threat has been associated with the single category that Microsoft security analysts determine to be most appropriate for the threat. The Miscellaneous Trojans category consists of all trojans that are not categorized as Trojan Downloaders & Droppers, including some rogue secu- rity software families. The Miscellaneous Potentially Unwanted Software category consists of all potentially unwanted software that is not categorized as Adware or Spyware, such as browser modifiers and remote control software. See the Glossary, beginning on page 229, for definitions of the other categories described in this section.

48 January through June 2009

Figure 10 shows the relative prevalence of different categories of malware and potentiallyunwanted software since 2H05, expressed as a percentage of the total number of comput-ers cleaned by all Microsoft security products during each time period. Totals may exceed100 percent for each time period because some computers are cleaned of more than onecategory of threat during each time period.Figure 10. Computers cleaned by threat category, in percentages, 2H05–1H09

2H05 1H06 2H06 1H07 2H07 1H08 2H08 1H09

Circular Markers Square Markers Represent

Represent Malware Potentially Unwanted Software

Miscellaneous Trojans remained the most prevalent category in 1H09, for the secondstraight period. Notably, Worms rose from fifth place in 2H08 to become the second-most Encyclopediaprevalent category in 1H09, largely due to significantly increased detections of the worm Win32/Conficker: A wormfamilies Win32/Conficker and Win32/Taterf, the two most prevalent families worldwide that spreads by exploiting ain 1H09. The prevalence of Password Stealers & Monitoring Tools also rose, due in part vulnerability addressed by Security Bulletin MS08-067. Some variantsto increases in several password-stealer families aimed at players of online games. Of also spread via removable drivesthe remaining categories, Trojan Downloaders & Droppers, Miscellaneous Potentially and by exploiting weak passwords.Unwanted Software, and Adware all had relative declines, with the others remaining rela- It disables several important system services and security products andtively stable from 2H08. downloads arbitrary files. Win32/Taterf: A family of worms that spread through mapped drives in order to steal login and account details for popular online games. http://www.microsoft.com/av

49Microsoft Security Intelligence Report

Operating System Trends

The features and updates available with different versions of the Windows operating system, along with the differences in the way people and organizations use each version, affect the infection rates seen with different versions and service packs. Figure 11 shows the infec- tion rate for each Windows operating system/service pack combination that accounted for at least 0.05 percent of total MSRT executions in 1H09. (Note that the infection rate for each version of Windows is calculated separately; the infection rate for a version is not affected by the number of computers running it. See page 37 for a definition of the CCM metric used to calculate infection rates.) Figure 11. Number of computers cleaned for every 1,000 MSRT executions, by operating system, 1H09

Consistent with previous periods, the infection rate for Windows Vista is significantly lower than that of its predecessor, Windows XP, in all configurations. Specifically: ◆◆ Comparing the latest service packs for each version, the infection rate of Windows Vista SP1 is 61.9 percent less than that of Windows XP SP3.15 ◆◆ Comparing the RTM versions of these operating systems, the infection rate of the RTM version of Windows Vista is 85.3 percent less than that of the RTM version of Windows XP.

15 Windows Vista Service Pack 2 was released on June 30, 2009, the last day of 1H09, and is therefore not included in this analysis.

50 January through June 2009

Similarly, the infection rate of Windows Server 2008 RTM is 56.1 percent less than that ofits predecessor, Windows Server 2003 SP2. Server versions of Windows typically display alower infection rate on average than client versions, especially when comparing the latestservice pack version for each operating system. Windows Server 2008, which includes onlyserver editions, has the lowest infection rates of any configuration on the chart, while theWindows XP configurations, intended for home and workplace users, have the highest.Windows 2000 SP4, which includes both server and client editions, falls between the twoextremes. Servers tend to have a lower effective attack surface than computers runningclient operating systems because they are more likely to be used under controlled condi-tions by trained administrators and to be protected by one or more layers of security. Inparticular, Windows Server 2003 and its successors are hardened against attack in a numberof ways, reflecting this difference in usage. For example, Internet Explorer EnhancedSecurity Configuration is enabled by default, and the Roles Wizard automatically disablesfeatures that are not needed for the configured server role.Infection rates for the 64-bit versions of Windows XP and Windows Vista are lower thanfor the corresponding 32-bit versions of those platforms, a difference that might beattributable to a higher level of technical expertise on the part of people who run 64-bitoperating systems. This difference may be expected to decrease as 64-bit comput-ing continues to make inroads among mainstream users. Microsoft’s original equipmentmanufacturer (OEM) partners are increasingly selling the 64-bit version of Windows Vistawith mid-range and high-end desktop and laptop computers, and the infection rate differencebetween 32-bit and 64-bit Windows Vista is correspondingly lower than that of Windows XPSP2. Technical savvy is unlikely to be a contributing factor for system administratorsdeciding between 32-bit and 64-bit versions of server operating systems, and indeed thedifference is negligible for both Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008.Figure 11 also shows that computers with more recent service packs installed have signifi-cantly lower infection rates than computers with older service packs (or the RTM release)for the same platform. This trend can be observed consistently across client and serveroperating systems. There are two likely reasons for this:◆◆ Service packs include fixes for all security vulnerabilities fixed in security updates at the time of issue. They can also include additional security features, mitigations, or changes to default settings to protect users.◆◆ Users who install service packs may generally maintain their computers better than users who do not install service packs and therefore may also be more cautious in the way they browse the Internet, open attachments, and engage in other activities that can open computers to attack.

51Microsoft Security Intelligence Report

Figure 12 illustrates the consistency of these trends over time, showing infection rates for different configurations of the 32-bit versions of Windows XP and Windows Vista for each six-month period between 1H07 and 1H09. Figure 12. CCM trends for 32-bit versions of Windows Vista and Windows XP, 1H07–1H09

35 Windows XP RTM 30

25 Windows XP SP1

20

Windows XP SP2 15

10 Windows XP SP3

5 Windows Vista RTM

Windows Vista SP1 0 1H07 2H07 1H08 2H08 1H09

Infection rates as measured by the MSRT are greatly influenced by the selection of new families detected by the monthly releases of the tool, so upward or downward trends between periods can be misleading. However, the ratios between Windows XP and Windows Vista in different configurations demonstrate clearly that Windows Vista is sig- nificantly less susceptible to infection than Windows XP and has remained so even as it has been adopted by larger segments of the computer-using population.

52 January through June 2009

Malware and Potentially Unwanted Software Families

Figure 13 lists the top 25 malware and potentially unwanted software families that weredetected on computers by Microsoft desktop security products in 1H09.Figure 13. Top 25 malware and potentially unwanted software families detected by Microsoft anti-malware desktopproducts worldwide, by number of unique infected computers, in 1H09

For the most accurate possible estimate of the effect of the worm family Win32/Conficker, Encyclopedia listed as the most prevalent family of 1H09, the figure given for 1H09 reflects the number of IP addresses infected by the A, B, C, and D variants that were detected on June 30, 2009, Win32/Conficker: A worm that spreads by exploiting a by sinkhole installations operated by the Shadowserver Foundation and the Conficker Work- vulnerability addressed by Security ing Group (CWG). For more information about Conficker and the worldwide response Bulletin MS08-067. Some variants also spread via removable drives to the threat, see “Win32/Conficker Update,” beginning on page 95, and “Case Study: The and by exploiting weak passwords. Conficker Working Group,” beginning on page 29. It disables several important system services and security products and This list reflects the growing prevalence of families associated with rogue security software— downloads arbitrary files. programs that falsely claim to detect malware or other security problems on a victim’s Win32/FakeXPA: A rogue security computer and offer to “fix” them for a price. Three of the top 25 families—Win32/FakeXPA, software family that claims to scan for malware and then demands Win32/Yektel, and Win32/Winwebsec—are rogue security software families, and a fourth, that the user pay to remove non- Win32/Renos, is often used as a delivery mechanism for rogue security software. Renos existent threats. Some variants and FakeXPA are returnees from 2H08, when they ranked first and seventh respectively. unlawfully use Microsoft logos and trademarks. Yektel and Winwebsec are newcomers to the list, having been added to the MSRT in Win32/Yektel: A family of trojans December 2008 and May 2009, respectively. For more information about these threats, see that display fake warnings of “Win32/Conficker Update,” on page 95. spyware or malware in an attempt to lure the user into installing or Win32/Taterf and Win32/Frethog, ranked second and fifth respectively, belong to a group paying money to register rogue of loosely related families that target players of online games and attempt to steal their security products such as Win32/ FakeXPA. login credentials. Both families have increased in prevalence relative to 2H08, when they Win32/Winwebsec: A family of ranked fifth and thirteenth, respectively. For more information, see “Online Gaming- rogue security software programs Related Families,” on page 62 of Microsoft Security Intelligence Report, Volume 5 (January that have been distributed with through June 2008). several different names. The user interface varies to reflect each variant’s individual branding. User Reaction to Alerts Win32/Renos: A family of trojan downloaders that install rogue Software cannot always be classified in binary terms as “good” or “bad.” Some software security software. inhabits a gray area wherein the combination of behaviors and value propositions pre- http://www.microsoft.com/av sented by the software is neither universally desired nor universally reviled. This gray area includes a number of programs that do things like display advertisements to the user that may appear outside the context of the Web browser or other application and which may be difficult or impossible to control. Many users consider some behaviors of these pro- grams objectionable, but some may appreciate the advertisements or may wish to use other applications that come bundled with the advertising programs and that will not function if the advertising programs are not present. Microsoft refers to software in this gray area as potentially unwanted software, and provides products and technologies to give visibility and control to the user.16

16 Microsoft has published the criteria that the company uses to classify programs as potentially unwanted software at http://www.microsoft. com/windows/products/winfamily/defender/analysis.mspx. For programs that have been classified as potentially unwanted software, Microsoft provides a dispute resolution process to eliminate false positives and help vendors satisfy the criteria for recategorization.

54 January through June 2009

Many of the tools Microsoft provides for dealing with malware and potentially unwantedsoftware are designed to allow users to make informed decisions about removing or retain-ing specific software, rather than to simply remove it outright. These tools give each of thefamilies they track a severity rating of Low, Medium, High, or Severe, based on an objec-tive analysis of the specific behaviors seen in the software. In addition, a choice of actionsis given for each family, one of which may be listed as the default action:◆◆ Ignore. Ignores the alert once. Users may choose to ignore an alert multiple times for the same piece of potentially unwanted software.◆◆ Allow (or Always Allow). Adds the software to a list of allowed items so that the user is not prompted about it again. The user may choose to remove the software from the allowed items list in the future.◆◆ Prompt. Prompts the user to make a decision about what to do with the software.

◆◆ Quarantine. Disables the software in such a way that it can be restored at a later point.

◆◆ Remove. Removes the software from the system. Threats rated with a severity of High or Severe are removed automatically during scheduled scans. For viruses, a Clean option is offered to remove the virus from the infected files and to leave the files on the computer, if possible.Figure 14. A Windows Defender user action prompt for a threat rated High

These decisions are influenced by a number of factors, such as the user’s level of expertise,how certain they feel about their judgment regarding the software in question, the contextin which the software was obtained, societal considerations, and the benefit (if any) beingdelivered by the software or by other software that is bundled with it. Users make choicesabout what to do about a piece of potentially unwanted software for different reasons, so it’simportant not to draw unwarranted conclusions about their intent. For instance, Removeand Quarantine usually indicate that the user is making an active choice to eliminatethe software. Allow usually suggests that the user wants to keep the software. However,

55Microsoft Security Intelligence Report

users choose Ignore for a variety of reasons. For example, they might be confused by the choices, they might want to defer the action to a more convenient time, or they might want to spend more time evaluating the software before making a decision. Figure 15 shows the actions users took in 1H09 in response to threats labeled Low, Moder- ate, High, and Severe. Figure 15. User action by threat severity, 1H09

80%

70%

60%

50% Total Removal

Ignore 40% Allow 30%

20%

10%

0% Severe High Moderate Low

A few important points to keep in mind when interpreting Figure 15 and Figure 17 on page 57: ◆◆ “Total Removal” includes Remove, Clean, Quarantine, and cases in which a default removal action was performed (for example, if the user clicked the window’s Close button without selecting an action). ◆◆ This figure does not include data for threats rated High and Severe that were removed after scheduled scans without the user being asked to make a choice. ◆◆ The large number of Ignore events recorded is due in part to the fact that users can choose to repeatedly ignore alerts pertaining to the same detected software, which causes an Ignore event to be recorded each time. The data shows that users overwhelmingly choose to remove threats labeled Severe and High. As Figure 14 illustrates, the user interface presents these threats in an unambiguously negative light. The color red is used prominently to inform users of Severe and High threats, appearing in banners and icons to connote danger. The user is given the opportunity to see detailed information and recommendations about the threat, and an appropriate removal action is pre-selected as the default choice.

56 January through June 2009

By contrast, users are more likely to choose Ignore when dealing with threats labeledMedium and Low. The user interface presents these threats with more nuanced graphicsand descriptions than Severe and High threats, as seen in Figure 16. Medium and Lowthreats are associated with the color yellow, connoting caution rather than danger, andthe descriptive text characterizes the detected software as something that the user simply“might not want to run.”Figure 16. A Windows Defender user action prompt for a threat rated Medium

The nature of the detected threat also tends to have an effect on user actions, as illustratedby Figure 17.Figure 17. User action by threat category, 1H09

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57Microsoft Security Intelligence Report

All of the most frequently removed categories are malware categories. Most threats in these categories have alert levels of Severe or High, and the categories used to classify these threats have names that are well-known to large segments of the computing public or have clear negative connotations—virus, worm, backdoor, trojan. The three potentially unwanted software categories (Spyware, Miscellaneous Potentially Unwanted Software, and Adware) have the fewest removal actions and the most Ignore actions, suggesting that many users accept the value propositions presented by such pro- grams and believe their benefits outweigh any specific behaviors that are unwanted by some. Notably, Allow appears very infrequently in the data, accounting for no more than 1.5 percent of any category. Some users may not understand that an Allow option is avail- able for software they want to keep, while others may prefer to ignore the alert, in some cases repeatedly, rather than take an action with more perceived finality.

Trends in Sample Proliferation

Malware authors attempt to evade detection by continually releasing new variants in an effort to outpace the release of new signatures by antivirus vendors. Counting unique sam- ples is one way to determine which families and categories of malware are currently most active (in other words, which families and categories are currently being most actively worked on by their developers) and how effective such activity is in helping malware developers reach their goal of infecting large numbers of computers. Nearly 116 million malicious samples were detected in the wild in 1H09. Figure 18 lists the number of unique files detected in each category of threat by Microsoft security products in 1H09, not including damaged or corrupted samples. (Malware often creates corrupted samples when replicating. These samples cannot affect users and are not counted when analyzing samples.)

(Graph excludes virus samples.)

er s

The high number of virus samples is due to the fact that viruses can infect many differentfiles, each of which is a unique sample. Sample counts for viruses should therefore not betaken as an indication of large numbers of true variants for these families.

59Microsoft Security Intelligence Report

Another factor that tends to inflate the sample count for certain families is polymorphism, which results in the automatic creation of large numbers of unique (but functionally iden- tical) files as part of the malware replication process. There are two general types of poly- morphism that affect sample counts: ◆◆ Server-side polymorphism, in which a server is configured to serve a slightly different version of a file every time it is accessed, typically in an effort to foil detection signa- tures. This can result in hundreds or thousands of files with different hash values but identical functionality being detected, which inflates the number of samples. ◆◆ Malware polymorphism, in which the malware itself changes slightly every time it replicates, possibly by changing the file name of a component to a new random value or encrypting it in a slightly different way. Figure 19 lists the families with the most unique detected samples in 1H09. Figure 19. Families with more than 1 million unique samples detected in 1H09

Reports/ Family Most Significant Category Total Samples Total Reports Sample

The virus families Win32/Parite and Win32/Virut were responsible for the most uniquesamples by a large margin, accounting for almost as many samples as all other families Encyclopediacombined. Win32/Agent is actually a generic detection that finds and removes groups of Win32/Parite: A family of virusessimilar threats, so the large number of samples should not be taken as an indication of that infect .exe and .scr executabledevelopment activity for any particular family. files on the local file system and on writeable network shares.ASX/Wimad is a detection for a class of malicious Windows Media® files that contain links Win32/Virut: A family of fileto executable files, which can contain malicious payloads. The URLs used can vary widely, infecting viruses that target andresulting in large numbers of unique samples. The adware family Win32/GameVance pro- infect .exe and .scr files accessed on infected systems. Win32/duces a large number of samples because of unique configuration information that is cre- Virut also opens a backdoor byated after the software is installed. Most of the other families on the list employ server-side connecting to an IRC server.polymorphism to some degree. ASX/Wimad: A detection for malicious Windows Media files thatThe high number of variants seen for some categories and families illustrates why simple can be used to encourage usershash lists based on specific variants are ineffective in stopping threats and why security to download and execute arbitrary files on an affected machine.software vendors must use more complex heuristics to identify and stop threats. Win32/GameVance: Software that displays advertisements and tracksThreats at Home and in the Enterprise anonymous usage information in exchange for a free online gaming experience at the WebNotwithstanding the “road warrior” scenario, in which an employee takes an enterprise address “gamevance.com.”laptop home or to another location, most desktop and laptop computers are used exclu- http://www.microsoft.com/avsively at home or in the workplace. The behavior patterns of home users and enterpriseusers tend to be very different. Enterprise users typically use computers to perform busi-ness functions and may have limitations placed on their Internet and e-mail usage. Homeusers are more likely to use their computers for entertainment purposes, like playinggames, watching videos, and communicating with friends. These different behavior pat-terns mean that home users tend to be exposed to a different mix of computer threats thanenterprise users.During 1H09, Microsoft offered two products that provide real-time protection againstmalware and potentially unwanted software—Windows Live OneCare,17 which is intendedfor home use, and Microsoft Forefront Client Security, which is intended for enterpriseenvironments. Both of these products use the Microsoft Malware Protection Engine anda common signature set to provide protection against a large database of known threats,but they are typically deployed in very different environments. Comparing the threatsencountered by Windows Live OneCare to those encountered by Forefront Client Securitycan provide insights into the different ways attackers target enterprise and home users andwhich threats are more likely to succeed in each environment.

17 Microsoft discontinued retail sales of Windows Live OneCare on June 30, 2009, but continues to make virus definitions available to active subscribers. In 2H09, Microsoft is introducing a new, streamlined anti-malware solution, Microsoft Security Essentials, which will be made available at no charge to licensed users of Windows. See http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/ for details.

61Microsoft Security Intelligence Report

Figure 20 shows the relative prevalence of different categories of malware and potentially unwanted software on infected computers running Windows Live OneCare and Forefront Client Security in 1H09, expressed as a percentage of the total number of infected computers cleaned by each program. Totals exceed 100 percent for each program because some com- puters were cleaned of more than one category of families. Figure 20. Threat categories detected by Windows Live OneCare and Forefront Client Security, by percentage of all infected computers cleaned by each program, in 1H09

60%

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40% Windows Live OneCare

Forefront Client Security

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Forefront Client Security) in 1H09 were much more likely to encounter worms than comput- ers running Windows Live OneCare, while the systems running Windows Live OneCare encountered significantly greater percentages of trojans, adware, and exploits. Similar per- centages of Password Stealers & Monitoring Tools, Miscellaneous Potentially Unwanted Software, Backdoors, and Spyware were detected by both products.

62 January through June 2009

As Figure 21 and Figure 22 show, the top families encountered by Windows Live OneCareand Forefront Client Security were also very different.Figure 21. Top 10 families detected on infected computers by Windows Live OneCare, by percentageof computers cleaned, in 1H09

Win32/Conficker Worms 12.3%

Win32/Autorun Worms 6.6% Win32/Hamweq Worms 5.9% Win32/Agent Miscellaneous Trojans 5.1% Win32/Taterf Worms 3.9% Win32/Obfuscator Misc. Potentially Unwanted Software 1.9% Win32/Renos Miscellaneous Trojans 1.7% Encyclopedia Win32/RealVNC Password Stealers & Monitoring Tools 1.6% ASX/Wimad: A detection for Win32/Sality Viruses 1.6% malicious Windows Media files that can be used to encourage users AutoIt/Renocide Worms 1.4% to download and execute arbitrary files on an affected machine. Win32/Swif: A trojan that exploitsThe malware most encountered by Windows Live OneCare was ASX/Wimad, a detection a vulnerability in Adobe Flashfor a category of malicious Windows Media files. In general, threats involving media files Player to download malicious files. Adobe has published securityare far more likely to be encountered on home computers, which are presumably more bulletin APSB08-11 addressing thelikely to be used to play music and video content from a wide variety of sources than com- vulnerability.puters in the workplace. Likewise, Win32/Swif is a trojan that exploits a vulnerability in http://www.microsoft.com/avAdobe® Flash Player, which is often used to play multimedia content.

63Microsoft Security Intelligence Report

The Windows Live OneCare list also includes several malware families associated with Encyclopedia rogue security software, such as Win32/Renos and Win32/FakeXPA. The social engineer- ing messages used in connection with rogue security software may be less effective in an Win32/Renos: A family of trojan downloaders that install rogue enterprise environment, where malware protection is typically the responsibility of the IT security software. department, and may appear on Web sites and in other contexts that users are more likely Win32/FakeXPA: A rogue security to encounter at home. For more information, see “Rogue Security Software Still a Signifi- software family that claims to scan cant Threat,” on page 100. for malware and then demands that the user pay to remove non- By contrast, the Forefront Client Security list is dominated by worms, like Win32/Conficker, existent threats. Some variants unlawfully use Microsoft logos and Win32/Hamweq, and Win32/Taterf. Worms rely less on social engineering to spread than trademarks. threats like trojans and downloaders do and more on access to unsecured file shares and Win32/Conficker: A worm removable storage volumes—both of which are often plentiful in enterprise environments. that spreads by exploiting a Conficker, in particular, uses several methods of propagation that work more effectively vulnerability addressed by Security Bulletin MS08-067. Some variants within a firewalled network environment than over the public Internet. (For more infor- also spread via removable drives mation, see “Win32/Conficker Update,” on page 95.) and by exploiting weak passwords. It disables several important system The worm family Taterf is an interesting case. It targets massively multiplayer online role- services and security products and downloads arbitrary files. playing games, which are not common in the workplace, but the techniques it employs (such as infecting removable drives) make it spread more effectively in enterprise environ- Win32/Hamweq: A worm that spreads through removable drives, ments. Win32/RealVNC is a program that enables a computer to be controlled remotely, such as USB memory sticks. It may similar to Remote Desktop. It has a number of legitimate uses, but it can also be used contain an IRC-based backdoor enabling the computer to be by an attacker with malicious intent to gain control of a user’s computer under some controlled remotely by an attacker. circumstances. Win32/Taterf: A family of worms Families appearing on both lists include Renos and Win32/Autorun. Autorun is a family that spread through mapped drives to steal login and account of worms that spread by copying themselves to the mapped drives of an infected computer, details for popular online games. including network shares and removable storage volumes. As noted earlier, such resources Win32/RealVNC: A management are common in enterprise environments and, consequently, Autorun is detected much tool that allows a computer to more often in enterprise environments than on home computers. be controlled remotely. It can be installed for legitimate purposes but can also be installed from a remote location by an attacker. Malware and Signed Code http://www.microsoft.com/av Microsoft Authenticode® is a technology that can help ensure the source of code. It does not ensure that code is safe to run, but it can ensure that the code is associated with an entity in a trust chain.18 Authenticode certificates are issued by Certificate Authorities (CAs), such as VeriSign (http://www.verisign.com), Comodo (http://www.comodo.com), or GlobalSign (http://www.globalsign.com). CAs are responsible for verifying the identities of the entities to whom they issue certificates. After a CA issues a certificate to an entity, that entity uses a private key to individually sign files. Any tampering or modification of the file or certifi- cate invalidates the signature. Microsoft works closely with CAs to monitor the certificates issued to software vendors, particularly when malware is detected.

18 For more information on Authenticode and code-signing, see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms537361.aspx.

64 January through June 2009

Code signing is a powerful method of authoritatively identifying code, assuring its integ-rity at the time of signing and the identity of the code signer. Signed code can be mucheasier to research and analyze because of the greater certainty of the association of thesigner with the file. For this reason, anti-malware vendors are among the most diligentcode signers. This assertion of identity also scales very well—a few code-signing certifi-cates positively identify millions of genuine Microsoft files. Signing also enables features,like 64-bit Windows Vista Kernel Mode Driver Signing, that can help improve securityby enforcing a code-signature requirement and helping to prevent unsigned drivers frombeing modified and loaded. System administrators can use the Software Restriction Policiesfeature of Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008 to restrict users to applica-tions assigned by approved publishers. AppLocker™, a key feature of Windows 7 andWindows Server 2008 R2, takes this concept a step farther, allowing more flexible rulesbased on individual digital certificate attributes and other criteria.

Certificates on Detected Files

In theory, malicious code can be code signed in a number of ways. A legitimate publishercould sign malicious code mistakenly, private keys issued to legitimate entities could bestolen and used to sign code, or malware authors can be issued a certificate by a CA. TheMMPC has not confirmed any cases of private keys being stolen and used on detectedcode nor has it confirmed any cases of mistaken signing by a legitimate entity, but it hasconfirmed many cases of CAs issuing code-signing certificates to malware authors. Thisusually results when CAs participating in the Microsoft Root Certificate Program issuecode-signing certificates to a software publisher who uses the certificate to sign malware.In some cases, the CA is owned and operated by the malware authors, and the first stepin infection is tricking users into installing a root certificate. In most cases, though, CAsparticipating in the Microsoft Root Certificate Program are tricked into issuing a validcertificate to the malware author.In the first six months of 2009, the MMPC received reports of 3.3 million distinct mal-ware and potentially unwanted software files with valid code signatures, compared to113 million instances of distinct detected files that were not signed. Of these 3.3 million,3.1 million were signed by two entities, with the remaining 157,000 code-signed files splitbetween 260 different entities. Fortunately, the majority of certificates used by threats withalert classifications of Severe and High have been revoked by the CAs that issued them.(See “User Reaction to Alerts,” beginning on page 54, for more information about alertclassification.)In addition, more than 34,000 virus-infected files with invalid code signatures werereported over 178,000 times. When a virus infects a valid code-signed file, it invalidatesthe signature.

65Microsoft Security Intelligence Report

As a general rule, code-signed threats produce fewer individual unique samples than unsigned files, but each unique sample tends to be reported more often. Aside from the additional expense and effort it takes to create code-signed threats, client-side polymor- phism—one of the principal factors that causes threats to generate large numbers of unique samples—cannot be effectively implemented by code-signed malware because it invalidates the digital signature. Figure 23. The 10 families responsible for the most signed-code threat reports in 1H09

% of Signed % of Signed Family Most Significant Category Threat Files Threat Reports

The MMPC’s standard practice when encountering code-signed malware spreading in the wild is to create detection signatures for the malware and to contact the issuing CA with details of the file in question, so the CA can review the issued certificate to determine if any action is needed. CAs maintain Certificate Revocation Lists (CRLs) on the Internet, which list mistakenly issued, abused, or other problem certificates. Software like Windows Internet Explorer 8 attempts to check CRLs when verifying code signing of any down- loaded code.

66 January through June 2009

Threat CombinationsWhen a threat is detected on a computer, it is often not alone. The security products andtools that provide the information for this section frequently find multiple threats presenton an infected computer. There are several reasons for this:◆◆ With profit-oriented criminal endeavors now accounting for most malware activity, attackers rarely act alone. Attacks are usually not perpetrated by malware creators themselves. Instead, creators and their customers come together in online black mar- kets where malware kits and botnet access are bought and sold. A bot-herder, for example, may rent out the same collection of infected computers to multiple parties for different purposes, requiring the installation of different types of malware.19◆◆ Trojan downloaders and droppers, which were found on 20.4 percent of infected com- puters in 1H09, are designed specifically to install other malware on an infected com- puter, resulting in multiple infections. Other types of malware also download files, in addition to their primary function.◆◆ A single attack event, such as a drive-by download, often results in multiple threats being installed on a computer.◆◆ Users who have not been taught about computer security and staying safe online may be prone to repeatedly engaging in the same unsafe practices, exposing them to mul- tiple threats.Examining which threats are typically found together on the same infected computer canprovide insights into the motives and techniques of attackers and help security researchersdevelop more effective methods for fighting them.

Web-Based Malware Distribution Networks

Malware found on the Web often downloads other malware. These malware distributionnetworks can be simple or complex. Some threats simply contact a single URL to check forupdates. Other threats make use of elaborate networks involving several interrelated anddependent threat families.Microsoft collects and analyzes malware from the Web to help researchers identify andprioritize important threats. Automated agents download and analyze malware files frommalicious URLs submitted to Microsoft through a number of different mechanisms. Anyembedded URLs discovered within these files are themselves submitted to agents for pro-cessing. The telemetry data generated through this process helps researchers better under-stand how malware spreads, by indicating which threat families are likely to downloadother threats, and how.

Figure 24 and Figure 25 show category breakdowns for parent threats (threats that down- loaded others) and child threats (threats that were downloaded by others), respectively. Figure 24. Threats that downloaded other threats, by category, in 1H09

Password Stealers & Monitoring Tools (12.5%)

As might be expected, threats in the Trojan Downloaders & Droppers category were observed to download the most threats, followed by Miscellaneous Trojans. Altogether, trojans were responsible for more than half of parent threats and nearly half of child threats. Notably, downloaders and droppers also accounted for a significant percentage of child threats—attackers often use one downloader to download another, to add a layer of indirection or for management purposes (for example, to transfer control of some of the computers in a botnet to a purchaser).

68 January through June 2009

Notably, the category breakdown for parent threats is roughly similar to that of childthreats, with the significant exception of Password Stealers & Monitoring Tools, whichwere used as child threats significantly more often than parent threats. Whereas threatssuch as trojans, worms, and backdoors are often used as a means of compromising computersfor other purposes, attackers are more likely to use password stealers directly in service ofa goal, in this case to steal sensitive information from victims.An examination of the individual threat families that are downloaded from maliciousURLs embedded in malware reveals that more than a third of them (36.2 percent) areavailable from URLs hosted in multiple countries. Threats hosted in multiple countries aresignificantly more likely to be served from compromised computers (such as computers ina botnet) than threats hosted in a single country and significantly less likely to be hostedon servers the attacker controls through consensual hosting arrangements.Figure 26. Breakdown of threats hosted in one country and in multiple countries, by category, in 1H09

Misc. Potentially Unwanted Software

60% Backdoors Worms 40% Adware Viruses

Exploits 20% Spyware

0% One Country Multiple Countries

As Figure 26 shows, the category breakdown of single-country threats is largely similar to

that of multiple-country threats, with a few notable exceptions. Most significantly, adwareis responsible for a much larger percentage of single-country families (7.4 percent) thanof multiple-country threats (0.9 percent). Many adware families are installed by choice orbundled with other applications, and therefore do not require surreptitious or illicit host-ing arrangements like other families do.

69Microsoft Security Intelligence Report

Families Often Found Together

Examining some of the more commonly encountered threat combinations can provide insights into the nature of these malware distribution networks. The next several tables show the families that are most often found alongside a sample of currently prevalent threats of different types. Figure 27 lists the other threats most often detected on computers infected with Win32/ InternetAntivirus, a prevalent new rogue security software family. Figure 27. Other threats found on computers infected with Win32/InternetAntivirus

Percent of Win32/Internet Other Family Most Significant Category Antivirus-Infected Computers

Win32/Chadem Password Stealers & Monitoring Tools 27.5%

Like most rogue security software, Win32/InternetAntivirus is heavily dependent on social

engineering to spread. Misleading victims into paying for worthless software is the usual method by which attackers make money with rogue security software, and InternetAnti­ virus is no different, displaying warnings about a number of nonexistent threats on the user’s computer and offering to remove them for a price. In addition to typical rogue security software behavior, however, InternetAntivirus also downloads a password stealer, Win32/Chadem, when installed. Chadem monitors network traffic on the affected computer and attempts to steal user names and passwords for File Transfer Protocol (FTP) sites. The attacker uses the captured credentials to compromise servers and use them to host malware. Chadem was found on 27.5 percent of the computers that were infected with InternetAnti- virus, more than any other family. Other families frequently encountered on computers infected with InternetAntivirus include Win32/FakeIA, another rogue security software family, and Win32/Renos, a Encyclopedia downloader that itself is often used to install rogue security software-related families. Win32/FakeIA: A rogue security software family that impersonates the Windows Security Center. It may display product names or logos in an apparently unlawful attempt to impersonate Microsoft products. http://www.microsoft.com/av

70 January through June 2009

Figure 28, Figure 29, and Figure 30 list the other threats most often detected oncomputers infected with three different spambots: Win32/Cutwail, Win32/Rustock, and EncyclopediaWin32/Waledac. Win32/Cutwail: A trojan that downloads and executes arbitraryFigure 28. Other threats found on computers infected with Win32/Cutwail in 1H09 files, usually to send spam. Win32/ Cutwail has also been observed to Percent of Win32/Cutwail- download the attacker tool Win32/ Other Family Most Significant Category Infected Computers Newacc.

family of rootkit-enabled backdoor Win32/Rustock Backdoors 11.4% trojans, developed to aid in the distribution of spam. Recent variants appear to be associatedFigure 29. Other threats found on computers infected with Win32/Rustock in 1H09 with rogue security software. Win32/Waledac: A trojan that is Percent of Win32/Rustock- used to send spam. It also has the Other Family Most Significant Category Infected Computers ability to download and execute arbitrary files, harvest e-mail Win32/Cutwail Trojan Downloaders & Droppers 12.6% addresses from the local machine, perform denial-of-service attacks, Win32/Vundo Miscellaneous Trojans 11.0% proxy network traffic, and sniff Win32/Renos Trojan Downloaders & Droppers 10.9% passwords. http://www.microsoft.com/av

Figure 30. Other threats found on computers infected with Win32/Waledac in 1H09

Percent of Win32/Waledac- Other Family Most Significant Category Infected Computers

Win32/Tibs Miscellaneous Trojans 16.3%

An infected computer can belong to several different botnets, which overlap to varyingdegrees. As these figures show, each spambot was detected alongside at least one otherspambot with relative frequency. Win32/Renos also appears alongside Cutwail and Rustockwith relative frequency, which may be attributable more to the overall prevalence of Renosthan to any connection between it and the other two families.For more information about Waledac, a threat that has become significantly more preva-lent in 1H09, see “The Win32/Waledac Botnet and Spam,” on page 104.

71Microsoft Security Intelligence Report

E-Mail Threats

T he vast majority of the e-mail messages sent over the Internet are unwanted. Not only does all this unwanted e-mail tax the recipients’ inboxes and the resources of e-mail providers, but it also creates an environment in which e-mailed malware attacks and phishing attempts can proliferate. Blocking spam, phishing, and other e-mail threats is a top priority for e-mail providers, social networks, and other online communities. (“Malicious Web Sites,” beginning on page 82, includes more information about phishing in particular.)

Spam Trends and Statistics

Microsoft Forefront Online Protection for Exchange (FOPE; formerly Forefront Online Security for Exchange, or FOSE) provides enterprise-class spam and malware filtering services for thousands of customers. FOPE performs spam filtering in two stages. The vast majority of spam is blocked by servers at the network edge, which use reputation filtering and other non-content-based rules to block spam or other unwanted messages. Messages that are not blocked at the first stage are scanned using content-based rules, which detect and filter many additional e-mail threats, including attachments containing malware. Figure 31. Incoming messages blocked by FOPE each month in 1H09

80

70

60

50 Billions

40

30

20

10

0 Jan-09 Feb-09 Mar-09 Apr-09 May-09 Jun-09

In 1H09 overall, FOPE blocked about 97.3 percent of all unwanted messages at the net- work edge, compared to 92.2 percent in 2H08. As Figure 32 demonstrates, the effectiveness of edge-filtering techniques, such as IP address reputation checking, SMTP connection analysis, and recipient validation, have increased dramatically over the past several years, enabling mail-filtering services to provide better protection to end users even as the total amount of unwanted message traffic on the Internet remains as high as ever.

419 Scams (4.1%)

Image Only (5.4%)

Advertisements for pharmaceutical products accounted for 48.3 percent of the spam messagesblocked by FOPE content filters in 1H09, with advertisements for sexual performanceproducts accounting for 7.8 percent of the overall total. Together with non-pharmacy product ads(20.9 percent of the total), product advertisements accounted for 69.2 percent of spam in 1H09.

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In an effort to evade content filters, spammers often send messages consisting only of one or more images, with no text in the body of the message. Image-only spam messages accounted for 5.4 percent of the total in 1H09. Overall, the category breakdown for spam in 1H09 is very similar to that observed during 2H08, with no single category increasing or decreasing by more than 2.7 percent of the overall total. These figures do not include messages blocked at the network edge, though from past experience Microsoft security analysts believe the category breakdown for edge- blocked spam to be substantially similar to that for content-filtered spam.

Geographic Origins of Spam Messages

To measure the geographic distribution of spam, FOPE performs geographic lookups on the originating IP addresses of post-edge-blocked spam and maps them to their countries/ regions of origin. Most spam today is sent through botnets or other automated tools, so the geographic origin of a spam message typically provides little or no information about the location of the parties that wrote and transmitted the message. However, determining the origins of spam can provide another way to measure the magnitude of security prob- lems affecting different areas of the globe. Figure 34 shows the countries/regions around the world that sent the most spam, as detected by FOPE from March through June 2009. Figure 34. Locations sending the most spam messages, March–June 2009

South America (13.4%)

Europe (29.0%)

Asia (37.0%)

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Reputation Hijacking The spam-filtering algorithms used by large e-mail processors like FOPE typically take reputation into account when processing incoming messages—a message originating from a source with a good reputation is considered significantly less likely to be spam than a message originating from a poorly regarded or unknown source. Most spam is sent through botnets or from IP address ranges that are known to be used by spam operations. Services like FOPE typically block messages originating from sources like these automati- cally, at the network edge. Recent periods have seen a rise in spam originating from sources with good reputations, a tactic called reputation hijacking. To increase the likelihood that their messages will be seen, spammers look for ways to compromise computers and e-mail servers hosted by organizations with good reputations, such as schools, government departments, and legiti- mate corporations. For example, spam that originates from an infected computer at a well- known corporation and is relayed through the company’s outbound IP address is significantly more likely to be seen by its recipients than spam sent directly from a dynamic IP address assigned to a large home broadband provider (a telltale indicator of botnet activity). To help its customers maintain safe networks, FOPE monitors the amount of outbound spam sent through its service by tracking complaints from a number of third-party feed- back loop sources, including Hotmail, AOL, Comcast, SpamCop, and Yahoo!. As Figure 37 shows, educational institutions are the source of most spam sent through FOPE, by a wide margin, despite accounting for a relatively small portion of FOPE’s customer base. Whereas computers in corporate and government settings are usually centrally managed by the IT department, the computing environments at educational institutions often include student-owned computers in dormitories and other living spaces, many of which may not have adequate malware protection. Figure 37. Outbound spam sent through FOPE, by type of organization, in 1H09

Government (0.5%)

Corporate (12.4%) Education (87.1%)

76 January through June 2009

Spammers also seek to hijack the reputations of large, Web-based e-mail services, such asWindows Live Hotmail®, AOL, Google’s Gmail, and Yahoo!. These services use a number oftechniques to prevent spammers from sending large amounts of spam from their domains,so their reputations are generally quite good. Like a number of other e-mail protectionservices, FOPE does not block messages from these four providers at the network edge.All messages verified as originating from AOL, Gmail, Hotmail, or Yahoo! are subjected tocontent-based filtering only.Despite recent increases in reputation hijacking, the majority of the messages originatingwith these four services are legitimate, by a significant margin. AOL, Gmail, Hotmail, andYahoo! accounted for 15.1 percent of all mail processed by FOPE’s content filters in 1H09but just 1.6 percent of post-edge spam. Collectively, 8.9 percent of messages sent throughthe four services were spam, with percentages for individual services ranging from3.7 percent on the low end to 19.6 percent on the high end.

Malware in E-MailMassive malware outbreaks driven by malicious e-mail attachments are rarer today thanthey have been in the past, in part because popular e-mail providers, such as WindowsLive Hotmail, and enterprise services, like FOPE, typically offer anti-malware services inaddition to spam filtering. “Threats at Home and in the Enterprise,” beginning on page 61,describes why the threats that are most prevalent in enterprise environments are often verydifferent than the threats that most commonly affect home computer users. Comparing thethreats detected and removed from e-mail messages by the anti-malware features of FOPEand Hotmail demonstrates that these differences extend to e-mail, as well.Figure 38 and Figure 39 show the top 10 threats detected and removed by the anti-malwarefeatures of FOPE and Hotmail, respectively.Figure 38. Top 10 families detected in e-mail by Forefront Online Protection for Exchange, by percentageof all infected messages, in 1H09

Figure 39. Top 10 families detected in e-mail by Windows Live Hotmail, by percentage of all infected messages, in 1H09 Encyclopedia Rank Windows Live Hotmail Families Most Significant Category Percent Win32/Netsky: A mass-mailing worm that spreads by e-mailing itself to addresses found on 1 JS/Redirector Miscellaneous Trojans 10.4% an infected computer. Some 8.1% 2 Win32/Netsky Worms variants contain a backdoor component and perform DoS 3 Win32/Mabezat Virus 4.7% attacks. 3.9% 4 Win32/Helpud Miscellaneous Trojans Win32/Mydoom: A family of mass- 5 Win32/Rochap Trojan Downloaders & Droppers 3.5% mailing worms that spread through e-mail. Some variants also spread 6 Win32/Agent Miscellaneous Trojans 2.6% through P2P networks. Bagle acts 7 Win32/Gamania Password Stealers & Monitoring Tools 2.3% as a backdoor trojan and can sometimes be used to launch DoS 8 ASX/Wimad Trojan Downloaders & Droppers 2.2% attacks against specific Web sites. 9 Win32/Mydoom Worms 2.2% Win32/Mywife: A mass-mailing 10 Win32/Mywife Worms 2.1% network worm that targets certain versions of Microsoft Windows. The worm spreads through e-mail attachments and writeable network Unsurprisingly, mass-mailing worms appear prominently in both lists, including years- shares. It is designed to corrupt the content of specific files on the old threats like Win32/Netsky (first detected in 2004), Win32/Mydoom (first detected third day of every month. in 2004), and Win32/Mywife (first detected in 2005). Several of these threats spread by W97M/Melissa: A macro worm infecting older e-mail programs and sending copies of themselves to e-mail addresses on that spreads via e-mail and by the victims’ computers, so reputation filters are less likely to block them at the network infecting Word documents and templates. It is designed to work edge than some more modern threats. in Word 97 and Word 2000, and it uses Outlook to reach new targets Several of the “families” on both lists are actually generic detections, which the malware through e-mail. protection engine uses to detect groups of related or similar threats. Win32/Small, the VBS/LoveLetter: A family of threat detected most often by FOPE, is a generic detection that targets a large number of mass-mailing worms that targets simple threats, most of which have small file sizes. JS/Redirector, the threat detected most computers running certain versions of Windows. It can spread often by Hotmail, is a detection for a malicious JavaScript technique, frequently used by as an e-mail attachment and spammers, that redirects users to unexpected Web sites. through an IRC channel. The worm can download, overwrite, delete, infect, and run files on the infected Social Engineering and E-Mailed Threats computer. http://www.microsoft.com/av Dating back to early worms like W97M/Melissa and VBS/LoveLetter, attackers who dis- tribute malware through files attached to e-mail messages have always relied heavily on social engineering to convince people to open malicious attachments. Popular e-mail services, like Windows Live Hotmail, provide protection against such threats by scanning attachments for malware when they are downloaded or uploaded. Differences in the way Hotmail has implemented this protection for different access methods provide an inter- esting look at the relative effectiveness of the social engineering messages associated with particular threats and threat categories.

78 January through June 2009

Windows Live Hotmail users primarily access their e-mail through two different methods—byvisiting the service’s Web interface at http://www.hotmail.com using a Web browser, andby synchronizing their messages with a client program installed on the user’s computer ormobile device. Hotmail scans all attachments for malware when they are delivered to desk-top and mobile clients through synchronization, to protect users who may not have anti-malware software installed on their computers or devices. When a user of the Web-basedclient receives a message with an attachment, however, Hotmail does not scan the attach-ment until and unless the user chooses to download the attached file. If the user deletesthe message without downloading the attachment, they are never exposed to the maliciousfile, so it does not need to be scanned. Although fewer users access Hotmail through syn-chronized clients than through the Web interface, synchronized messages accounted fornearly twice as many malware detections in 1H09 as did Web-delivered messages.Malicious attachments detected through synchronization may be considered a controlgroup because all such attachments are scanned regardless of whether users choose toopen them. By contrast, malicious attachments in messages accessed through the HotmailWeb client are only likely to be detected if the user makes a conscious choice to downloadthem—in other words, if the social engineering message has succeeded. A malware familyor category that tends to be distributed with effective social engineering tactics is, there-fore, likely to appear with greater relative frequency among Web client detections thanamong desktop and mobile client detections, whereas the opposite is true of malwaredistributed with ineffective social engineering tactics.Breaking down the top 10 families detected by Hotmail in 1H09 by access method illus-trates how some social engineering tactics are more effective than others.Figure 40. Top 10 malware families detected by Windows Live Hotmail, by method of access, in 1H09

JS/Redirector and Win32/Netsky both appear with relative frequency among desktop and mobile client detections, but are rare among Web client detections, indicating that the social engineering techniques used to spread these threats are not very successful. As explained earlier, JS/Redirector is a detection for a JavaScript technique used to redirect Internet users to Web pages other than the ones they expect. The technique is simple to implement and is used widely by spammers. As such, e-mail messages containing JS/Redirector often end up in Hotmail’s “Junk” folder and are subsequently ignored. The five-year-old worm Win32/Netsky also appears relatively frequently among desktop and mobile client detections, in part because the short e-mail messages used to distribute Netsky are harder to block using content-based spam filters, like this typical example: From: [address] To: [address] Date: 1/9/2009 10:35:46 PM Subject: Hello

Important data!

The brevity that enables these messages to evade spam filters, however, does not appear to lend itself well to effective social engineering. Netsky only accounted for 3.0 percent of Web client detections, suggesting that users are particularly likely to discard such messages without opening the attachments. An example of a family that uses more effective social engineering to spread is the trojan Encyclopedia downloader Win32/Rochap, which accounted for 1.3 percent of desktop and mobile client detections but 7.7 percent of Web client detections. Rochap, which often masquerades as Win32/Rochap: A family of multi- component trojans that download a component of Internet Explorer, spreads using messages that are often tied to closely and execute additional malicious watched current events, such as the death of pop star Michael Jackson on June 25, 2009. files. While downloading, some variants display a video from Current events–themed social engineering is a tactic that has been used in connection the Web site “youtube.com,” with a number of other prevalent families in the past, including Win32/Nuwar and presumably to distract the user. Win32/Rustock. Win32/Nuwar: A family of trojan droppers that install a distributed P2P downloader trojan. This downloader trojan in turn downloads an e-mail worm component. Win32/Rustock: A multicomponent family of rootkit-enabled backdoor trojans, developed to aid in the distribution of spam. Recent variants appear to be associated with rogue security software. http://www.microsoft.com/av

80 January through June 2009

A Defense-in-Depth Strategy for E-Mail

The concept of defense in depth—deploying defensive measures in multiple layersor at multiple points along a process flow—is a basic tenet of computer security.FOPE provides defense in depth by using three different scanning engines from threedifferent antivirus vendors to detect malware. Each incoming attachment is scannedby each of the three engines in series, and if any of the three engines detects malware,the attachment is blocked.Most malware scanning engines are very good at scanning for known malware. Theprimary factors that differentiate them are how good they are at detecting “unknown”or “new” malware and how fast they respond to new malware outbreaks. Somevendors may detect a new threat later than others, and some vendors may be able tocreate, test, and publish an update faster than others, so the total response time canvary significantly. Defense-in-depth scanning is intended to reduce the impact of thisuncertainty, by providing access to the best and fastest protection from a combinationof different engines.Of course, no strategy can guarantee 100 percent protection, and some threats maystill be delivered to recipients. Moreover, with a strategy such as this one, there istypically an inflection point beyond which each additional layer produces increasinglydiminishing returns. A strategy that employs 10 different scanning engines in series,for example, may not provide significantly better protection than one that uses threeor four. System administrators can best benefit from multiple malware engines byselecting vendors with complementary areas of strength rather than focusing onquantity alone.

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Malicious Web Sites

A ttackers often use Web sites to host phishing pages or distribute malware. Although attackers sometimes set up Web servers of their own, most phish- ing pages are hosted by legitimate sites belonging to innocent parties that have been compromised through exploits or other techniques. Malicious Web sites typically appear completely legitimate and often give no outward indicators of their mali- cious nature, even to experienced computer users. In many cases, just visiting a malicious site can be dangerous, since attackers often create exploits that can download malware to vulnerable computers silently as soon as the user loads the page. Installing security updates for the operating system, the browser, and any installed browser add-ons in a timely man- ner can greatly reduce users’ chances of being victimized, although zero-day exploits pose a risk even to up-to-date computers. To protect users from malicious Web pages, browser vendors have developed filters that keep track of sites that host malware and phishing attacks and display prominent warnings when users try to navigate to them. Analyzing the telemetry produced by these tools can provide valuable information about the nature and spread of malicious Web sites.

Analysis of Phishing Sites

Phishing is a method of identity theft that tricks Internet users into revealing personal or financial information online. Attackers send messages purporting to be from a trusted institution, such as a bank, auction site, or popular Web site, attempting to lure potential victims into unwittingly divulging login credentials or other sensitive information, such as credit card numbers. Phishing impressions have risen significantly in 1H09, due primarily to a large increase in phishing attacks targeting social networking sites. (A phishing impression is a single instance of a user attempting to visit a known phishing site with Internet Explorer and being blocked.) In addition, phishers continued to target a wider range of site types than in the past, with gaming sites, portals, and the online presences of major corporations accounting for some of the most frequently targeted Web sites in 1H09.

Phishing Sites and Traffic

Microsoft maintains a database of known active phishing sites reported by users of Internet Explorer and other Microsoft products and services. When a user attempts to visit a site in the database with the Phishing Filter (in Internet Explorer 7) or SmartScreen Filter (in Internet Explorer 8) enabled, Internet Explorer checks the URL against the database. If the site has been reported as a phishing site, Internet Explorer blocks navigation to the site and displays a warning, as shown in Figure 41. Microsoft monitors traffic to the reported phishing URLs and uses the information to improve its filtering technology and its efforts to track suspected phishing sites.20 20 Microsoft is committed to protecting its customers’ privacy. See http://www.microsoft.com/windows/internet-explorer/privacy.aspx for the privacy statement for Internet Explorer 8, and see http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/ie7/privacy/ieprivacy_7.mspx for the privacy state- ment for Internet Explorer 7.

Figure 42 shows the number of phishing impressions recorded by Microsoft each month in1H09 for each of the most frequently targeted types of institutions. After remaining mostlyconsistent throughout 2H08 and through April 2009, the number of impressions suddenlyalmost quadrupled in May and rose even higher in June.Figure 42. Phishing impressions tracked each month in 2H08 and 1H09, indexed to January 2009

This steep increase was not accompanied by a rise in the total number of active phishing pages, which remained more stable from month to month in 1H09 but significantly higher on the whole than in 2H08. Figure 43. Active phishing sites tracked each month in 2H08 and 1H09, indexed to January 2009

Phishing impressions and active phishing pages rarely correlate strongly with each other. Phishers often engage in discrete campaigns intended to drive more traffic to each phish- ing page, without necessarily increasing the total number of active phishing pages they are maintaining at the same time. In this case, the steep increase in impressions in May and June was due in large part to a campaign or campaigns targeting social networks, which typically don’t require large numbers of active phishing pages, as explained on page 85.

Target Institutions Financial institutions, social networks, and e-commerce sites remained among the favorite targets for phishing attempts, although researchers have also observed some diversification into other types of institutions, such as online gaming sites, Web portals, and large soft- ware and telecommunications companies. Figure 44 and Figure 45 show the percentage of phishing impressions and active phishing sites, respectively, recorded by Microsoft each month in 1H09 for each of the most fre- quently targeted types of institutions.

84 January through June 2009

Figure 44. Impressions for each type of phishing site each month in 1H09

After a surge of phishing impressions that targeted online services in April, the numberof impressions targeting social networks rose significantly in May and June, commen-surate with the rise in overall impressions shown in Figure 42. By June, social networksaccounted for 76.0 percent of all phishing impressions.At the same time, social networks were only targeted by a very small percentage of activephishing pages, with the majority of pages consistently targeting financial institutions.Financial institutions targeted by phishers can number in the hundreds, requiring custom-ized phishing approaches for each one. By contrast, just a handful of popular sites accountfor the bulk of the social network usage on the Internet, so phishers can effectively targetmany more people per site—in fact, the average social network phishing page received

85Microsoft Security Intelligence Report

about 16 times as many impressions as the average financial institution phishing page. Although social networks have put a great deal of effort into educating their users about phishing attacks, the relatively high payoff potential suggests that social networks are likely to remain a tempting target for phishers in the future.

Geographic Distribution of Phishing Sites

Phishing sites are hosted all over the world on free hosting sites, on compromised Web servers, and in numerous other contexts. Performing geographic lookups on the IP addresses of the sites in the database of reported phishing sites makes it possible to create maps showing the geographic distribution of sites and to analyze patterns. Figure 46 and Figure 47 show the relative concentration of phishing sites in different loca- tions around the world and in U.S. states in 1H09.21Figure 46. Phishing sites per 1,000 Internet hosts for locations around the world in 1H09

Phishing Sites Per 1000 Internet Hosts

10 + 0.125 to 0.25

5 to 10 0.063 to 0.125

2 to 5 0.031 to 0.063

1 to 2 0.016 to 0.031

0.5 to 1 >0 to 0.016

0.25 to 0.5 0

Insufficient data www.microsoft.com/sir

21 Internet host estimates are from the World Factbook, at https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/. Due to a lack of reli- able state-by-state Internet host data, Figure 47 shows the number of phishing pages per 1,000 residents of each state, based on population estimates for 2008 published by the U.S. Census Bureau at http://www.census.gov/popest/states/.

As these maps show, phishing sites are concentrated in a few locations but have beendetected in many places around the world. Microsoft has tracked phishing sites on everyinhabited continent and in 46 of 50 U.S. states. Locations with smaller populations andfewer Internet hosts tend to have higher concentrations of phishing pages, although inabsolute terms most phishing pages are located in large, industrialized countries/regionswith large numbers of Internet hosts.

Analysis of Malware Hosts

Internet Explorer 8, released in March 2009, includes the SmartScreen Filter, a successorto the Phishing Filter in Internet Explorer 7. The SmartScreen Filter continues to provideprotection against phishing sites, as described in “Analysis of Phishing Sites,” beginning onpage 82, and also includes anti-malware support. The SmartScreen anti-malware feature isURL reputation–based, which means that it evaluates servers hosting downloads to deter-mine if those servers are distributing unsafe content. If a user visits a site known to dis-tribute malware, Internet Explorer 8 displays the SmartScreen blocking page and indicatesthat the server is known to distribute unsafe software. As with phishing sites, Microsoft

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keeps track of how many people visit each malware hosting site and uses the information to improve the SmartScreen Filter and to better combat malware distribution. The data cited in this section comes from SmartScreen telemetry generated by the final release version of Internet Explorer 8 and from pre-release versions made available to the public since the introduction of Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 in August 2008.

Types of Malware Distributed over the Web

Figure 48 shows the category breakdown for threats hosted at URLs blocked by the SmartScreen Filter in 2H08 and 1H09. Figure 48. Threats hosted at URLs blocked by the SmartScreen Filter, by category, in 2H08 and 1H09

Downloaders & Droppers categories dominated the list in both periods, with other catego- ries far behind. Comparing this data to Figure 10, on page 49, which shows threat category trends over time as detected by all Microsoft desktop anti-malware products, reveals a number of notable similarities and differences: ◆◆ The most significant difference concerns the Miscellaneous Potentially Unwanted Software category, which increased from 35.0 percent of malware impressions in 2H08 to 44.5 percent in 1H09, while the percent of computers cleaned declined from 22.8 percent to 14.9 percent for the category. (A malware impression is a single instance of an Internet Explorer user attempting to visit a site known to host malware and

88 January through June 2009

being blocked.) This suggests that SmartScreen and similar technologies may be having a measurable amount of success in protecting users from being infected by these threats at all, thereby ensuring that they are not present on the computer for desktop security products to detect.◆◆ Trojan Downloaders & Droppers declined significantly as a percentage of both SmartScreen impressions and computers cleaned.◆◆ Miscellaneous Potentially Unwanted Software is disproportionally likely to be distrib- uted over the Web, accounting for 44.5 percent of SmartScreen impressions in 1H09 but only 14.9 percent of computers cleaned. By contrast, worms are rarely distributed by malicious Web sites, accounting for just 1.2 percent of SmartScreen impressions, compared to 21.3 percent of computers cleaned.Figure 49. The top 10 malware families hosted on sites blocked by the SmartScreen Filter in Internet Explorer 8in 1H09

Figure 49 lists the top 10 malware and potentially unwanted software families blocked bythe SmartScreen Filter in 1H08, by user impression. Overall, sites hosting these 10 families Encyclopedia Win32/MoneyTree: A family ofconstituted 71.4 percent of all malware impressions. Coincidentally, this is almost exactly software that provides the abilitythe same share (71.2 percent) accounted for by the top 10 families in 2H08, although only to search for adult content onfour families from the 2H08 list carried over to 1H09 (and in significantly different pro- local disk. It may also install other potentially unwanted software,portion to one another). Win32/MoneyTree, in clear first place with more than six times as such as programs that displaymany malware impressions as the second-place family, increased from 19.2 percent of all pop-up ads.impressions in 2H08 to 32.8 percent in 1H09. Meanwhile, Win32/Renos, the most preva- Win32/Renos: A family of trojanlent family in 2H08 with 21.2 percent of malware impressions, dropped significantly in downloaders that install rogue security software.1H09 to just 5.1 percent of impressions. http://www.microsoft.com/av

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Rogue security software accounts for fully half of the top 10 families, led by Win32/ Encyclopedia FakeXPA and Win32/Winwebsec. As noted in “Rogue Security Software Still a Significant Threat,” on page 100, detections of rogue security software by Microsoft desktop security Win32/FakeXPA: A rogue security software family that claims to scan products declined 20 percent in 1H09, which may be due in part to browser-based anti- for malware and then demands malware features, such as the SmartScreen Filter. that the user pay to remove non- existent threats. Some variants Distribution patterns vary greatly by family. Some families spread using a small number unlawfully use Microsoft logos and trademarks. of high traffic distribution points, while other families use extremely diverse distribution mechanisms. Renos, the third-most prevalent family blocked by SmartScreen in 1H09, Win32/Winwebsec: A family of rogue security software programs has nearly 10,000 identified distribution points blocked by the SmartScreen Filter, with that have been distributed with each site yielding very low levels of traffic in the Internet Explorer 8 user base. At the other several different names. The user interface varies to reflect each extreme, some families use only a handful of distribution points that each received more variant’s individual branding. than 10,000 malware impressions in 1H09. http://www.microsoft.com/av Geographic Distribution of Malware Hosting Sites While more malware distribution sites are discovered on a daily basis than phishing sites, malware hosting tends to be more stable and less geographically diverse. This is probably due to the relatively recent use of server takedowns and Web reputation as weapons in the fight against malware distribution, which means that malware distributors have not been forced to diversify their hosting arrangements, as phishers have. As Internet Explorer 8 becomes more widely used, malware distributors may be expected to behave more like phishers, moving their operations more frequently to avoid detection and shutdown. Figure 50 and Figure 51 show the geographic distribution of malware hosting sites reported to Microsoft in 1H09, around the world and in the United States.

90 January through June 2009

Figure 50. Malware distribution sites per 1,000 Internet hosts for locations around the world in 1H09

“Malvertising”: An Emerging Industry Threat

Microsoft Internet Safety Enforcement Team

“Malvertisements” are becoming an increasingly popular mechanism by which trojans,

unwanted software, and deceptive advertisements are distributed to Internet users. The word itself is a portmanteau of “malicious” and “advertising,” which fairly approximates the purpose and method behind malvertisements. They incorporate deceptive techniques to deliver malicious code or deceptive advertising to consumers (or both) and are cam- ouflaged as ordinary online advertisements to evade detection by the advertising service companies through which they are inserted. Malvertisements take advantage of the robust distribution infrastructure built for online advertising as a vehicle to obtain easy and free impressions and to deliver malicious code to Internet users. They present a diffuse and difficult-to-manage threat vector, with mul- tiple points of entry into the online ecosystem: Each advertising network, Web site owner, or other advertising service provider that collects online advertisements and places them into the online advertising stream of commerce is a potential attack surface. Although malvertisements have been reported since at least 2006, their prominence increased markedly in 2008 when WashingtonPost.com, facebook.com, and MSNBC.com, as well as a number of other prominent Web sites, all suffered through malvertising inci- dents. In the most high-profile incident to date, in September 2009, highly trafficked sites including NYTimes.com and SFGate.com were hit with malvertisements. Insertion through advertising service providers is generally accomplished by a combination of social engineering and sophisticated technological deception. In most reported malvertising cases, persons approach an advertising service provider claiming to represent a well-known company wishing to start a campaign with the provider. Often, the contact will represent that he or she works for a boutique advertising agency, and the agency will have an at least minimally convincing online Web presence. The contact may also employ more traditional methods of fraud, such as using forged documents to bolster the credibil- ity and authority of the person placing the malvertisement. These initial “out of the blue” approaches sometimes include requests that the campaigns begin quickly or not at all, so that the advertising service provider’s ability to vet the new client is restricted. Payment is never up front, or if it is, it is made through compromised financial accounts; after all, the goal of malvertisers is to take a free ride on the robust online advertising infrastructure, and legitimate means of payment would create a money trail. Standardizing advertisement intake procedures, implementing robust checks, and training intake professionals will help to harden networks against malvertisement insertion by social engineering.

92 January through June 2009

If a malvertisement passes the intake stage, often little can be done except to limit the dam-age by carefully testing and monitoring new campaigns from unfamiliar sources. Malver-tisements themselves employ sophisticated and often layered defenses, which greatlyincrease the difficulty of detecting malicious code before the malvertisement is deployed.Many malvertisements are packaged in the SWF format used by Adobe Flash, a commonformat for online advertising. Functionality of malvertisment SWF files can be hidden byvarious methods, including encryption, resistance to decompilation, obfuscation routines,and white-space characters. Some malvertisements engage in cross-site scripting (XSS) tocall other SWF files at other Web pages disguised as benign-looking traffic counting pages.These downstream SWF files are generally not placed online until the underlying malver-tisement campaign begins, making detection before that time difficult. The downstreamSWF files can examine various browser states and automatically redirect end users to pay-load delivery Web sites, based on such things as default language, patch status, and time.

Microsoft’s Recent Legal Action Against Malvertising

Microsoft has several attack surfaces exposed to malvertisements. These include its servicesin publishing ads on its own online properties through Microsoft adCenter, brokeringads to publisher sites provided through Microsoft pubCenter, and delivery and trackingservices provided to publishers through Microsoft Atlas and Microsoft adManager. Despitea robust anti-fraud unit focused on detecting and preventing malvertisement attacks,Microsoft occasionally suffers a malvertising incident, to which it responds quickly andcollects data for potential enforcement actions and for study.In September 2009, Microsoft’s ISET team filed five civil lawsuits against persons respon-sible for malvertising attacks aimed at two of Microsoft’s attack surfaces: adCenter andadManager. Each of these cases involved an SWF malvertisement. In some cases themalvertisements directed browsers to a trojan dropper server, and in others the malver-tisements resulted in display of advertisements promoting scareware. Microsoft’s lawsuitsinclude claims under a variety of federal and state laws, including the federal ComputerFraud and Abuse Act, the Washington State Computer Spyware Act, and the WashingtonConsumer Protection Act. The five cases, brought initially against John Doe defendants,are captioned:22◆◆ Microsoft Corp. and Microsoft Online Inc. v. John Does 1-20, d/b/a DirectAd Solu- tions (King County Superior Court No. 09-2-34024-2 SEA)◆◆ Microsoft Corp. v. John Does 1-20, d/b/a Soft Solutions, Inc. (King County Superior Court No. 09-2-34021-8 SEA)

22 For docket and other information about the cases cited in this section, visit http://dw.courts.wa.gov.

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◆◆ Microsoft Corp. v. John Does 1-20, d/b/a qiweroqw.com (King County Superior Court Cause No. 09-2-34020-0 SEA) ◆◆ Microsoft Corp. v. John Does 1-20, d/b/a ote2008.info (King County Superior Court No. 09-2-34022-6 SEA) ◆◆ Microsoft Corp. v. John Does 1-20, d/b/a ITmeter Inc. (King County Superior Court Cause No. 09-2-34023-4 SEA) Microsoft’s primary goals in bringing these lawsuits are to identify the persons behind these particular malvertisement attacks, to obtain appropriate relief, and to stop these persons from carrying out such attacks in the future. In addition, through subpoenas and other investigation, Microsoft will obtain information that will enable deeper study of the methods for malvertisement coding, insertion, and distribution and will combine this information with other telemetrics to develop ways to harden attack surfaces from future malvertisements.

94 January through June 2009

Top Malware and Spam Stories of 1H09

S ecurity headlines in 1H09 were dominated by Win32/Conficker, the aggressive worm that was the most prevalent malware family worldwide in 1H09. Less pub- licized, but also quite significant, has been the continuing prevalence of rogue security software, with new families appearing and displacing older ones in anongoing effort to trick unsuspecting computer users into paying for ineffective softwarethey don’t need. Other stories of interest in 1H09 involve an automated SQL injection toolthat has been used against many Web sites; Win32/Koobface, a new threat that attacks socialnetworks; the spambot Win32/Waledac; and a couple of victories in the fight against spam.

Win32/Conficker UpdateThe out-of-band release of Security Bulletin MS08-067 on October 23, 2008, presagedthe development of a potent new threat. Designated Win32/Conficker, the worm notonly takes advantage of the MS08-067 vulnerability but also uses a number of dangeroustechnical and social engineering techniques to propagate; these had not been widely seenbefore. “MS08-067: Vulnerability in Windows Server Service,” beginning on page 41 ofMicrosoft Security Intelligence Report, Volume 6 (July through December 2008), explored theearly development of the worm, up to Worm:Win32/Conficker.B, released on December29, 2008. Since then, three more variants have been released into the wild, and securityprofessionals around the world have mobilized to protect their users from this aggressivethreat. (For an account of the response to Win32/Conficker at Microsoft and around theworld, see “Case Study: The Conficker Working Group,” beginning on page 29.)

Win32/Conficker.A and Win32/Conficker.B: The First Variants

On November 21, 2008, the first significant worm that exploits the Windows Server Servicevulnerability addressed by MS08-067 was discovered, which Microsoft designated Win32/Conficker. The first variant discovered, Worm:Win32/Conficker.A, only propagates byexploiting this vulnerability. Conficker.A did not spread particularly far or fast, in partbecause the security update that fixed the vulnerability had been released nearly a monthprior; home and enterprise users that installed the security update in a timely manner onall their computers were therefore not at risk of infection from this first variant.A significantly more dangerous variant, Worm:Win32/Conficker.B, was discovered onDecember 29, 2008. This variant also exploits the MS08-067 vulnerability but uses twoadditional propagation methods that allow it to spread much more quickly:◆◆ It attempts to connect to the ADMIN$ share on other computers on the network, first as the logged-in user and then by using a list of 248 weak passwords.◆◆ It drops an autorun.inf file on removable drives that displays a misleading Open folder to view files option in the AutoPlay dialog box, which installs the malware if selected.

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Figure 52. Worm:Win32/Conficker.B creates a fake AutoPlay

option (in red) on removable disks. An unprotected user who chooses the wrong “Open folder to view files” option may become infected.

After installing itself, Conficker blocks other malware from exploiting the MS08-067 vulnerability—not in an effort to protect the computer, but to prevent other malware from interfering with it. Every time the computer is restarted, in fact, the worm loads and blocks the vulnerability in memory again. Conficker uses an unusual mechanism, called HTTP rendezvous, to issue commands to compromised computers. The Conficker.A and Conficker.B variants include an algorithm that computes 250 new domain names each day, consisting of nonsense strings of characters like ltxbshpv.net and fwnvlja.org. Conficker.B generates a different list of domain names than Conficker.A due to minor changes in the algorithm used, so the two variants together generate a total of 500 domain names each day. An infected computer attempts to contact each domain on the list each day. The operators would be able to use the same algorithm to generate the domain names in advance and use them as command-and-control points.

Win32/Conficker.C: P2P Functionality

Another new Conficker variant was first detected on February 20, 2009. Definitions from Microsoft and several other vendors initially detected the new variant as Worm:Win32/ Conficker.B, leading some to call it “Conficker.B++.” However, the new variant included significant new functionality that prompted Microsoft to update its definitions to distinguish it as Worm:Win32/Conficker.C. Among other changes, the new variant added a peer-to- peer (P2P) function that used the MS08-067 vulnerability to facilitate file sharing between infected computers. The P2P mechanism allows the authors to distribute additional malware to infected computers, even if they are not able to register new domain names. Conficker.C was first detected eight days after the formation of the Conficker Working Group (CWG) and may have been released as a response to the fact that its authors could no longer effec- tively register many of the domain names that the worm algorithmically generated.

96 January through June 2009

Win32/Conficker.D: 50,000 New Domain Names a Day

Worm:Win32/Conficker.D was discovered on March 4, 2009. This variant appears to havebeen intended as a second, more effective response to the efforts of the CWG to shut downthe worm’s means of distribution and communication, as described in “Case Study: TheConficker Working Group,” beginning on page 29. Conficker.D included changes thatincreased the number of algorithmically generated domains available to it, while simulta-neously making it less dependent on them.Each of the earlier variants was programmed to monitor 250 new domain names per dayfor payloads to download and execute. After the CWG decrypted the algorithm the wormused to generate new domain names, it only needed to block access to 500 domain namesper day (250 used by Conficker.A and 250 shared by the B and C variants) to effectivelycontrol the ability of infected computers to cause further damage. To defeat this counter-measure, Conficker.D included a modified version of this domain-selection algorithm thatwould cause each infected computer to randomly select 500 domain names to monitor outof a pool of 50,000 algorithmically generated domain names per day. Conficker.D was pro-grammed to begin using this new mechanism on April 1, 2009.In addition to this change, Conficker.D also included an updated P2P mechanism thatenabled it to distribute and receive commands from other Conficker.D–infected com-puters and Conficker domains. This additional complexity made Conficker.D much lessdependent on centralized control than its predecessors. If the Conficker controllers wereable to register just one domain name out of the 50,000 names generated on a particularday, about 1 percent of the Conficker.D–infected computers worldwide would be able toreceive updates and commands from it. These computers would then be able to use theP2P mechanism to discover other Conficker.D–updated computers and distribute theupdates and commands to them, with the cycle repeating until a significant percentageof Conficker.D–infected computers had been contacted.Figure 53. Command-and-control methods used by Win32/Conficker.D

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Figure 54 shows the number of infected computers detected each day between March and June 2009 by the sinkhole servers operated by the Shadowserver Foundation.23 The “saw- tooth” effect apparent in the chart is caused by significant drops in the number of infected computers contacting the sinkhole servers on weekends, reflecting Conficker’s tendency to spread across workplace networks with relative ease. The particularly large drop shown for the weekend of May 23, 2009, corresponds to Memorial Day, a major vacation day in the United States. Figure 54. IP addresses infected by variants of Win32/Conficker, March–June 2009

What Happened on April 1?

Following the discovery of Worm:Win32/Conficker.D on March 4, 2009, a number of stories published and broadcast by both the general news media and the technical press seized upon the April 1, 2009, date, when Conficker.D was programmed to begin using its new domain-name generation algorithm, and raised the specter of a “doomsday” scenario in which the worm would suddenly awake and wreak unknown havoc on the world’s computers. When this failed to occur, another round of stories appeared, declaring the threat to have been overblown and noting the connection to April Fools’ Day. In fact, researchers have never found evidence that any Conficker variant was configured to change its behavior on April 1, other than by changing the way it searched for command-and-control servers. Even this change was not a new behavior but a revision of an existing one, implemented because the efforts of the CWG and its partners had made the old distribution mechanism largely ineffective. Nor is it accurate to suggest, as some stories have, that the Conficker botnet remains dormant, like a predator waiting for the right time to attack. As explained in “The Win32/Waledac Botnet and Spam,” on page 104, the Conficker botnet has been used to download rogue security software to infected computers, a fairly typical activity for malware. In the security response community, of course, April 1 was a very significant date, requiring a great deal of cooperation between security software vendors, ISPs, domain registrars, and others, as explained in “Case Study: The Conficker Working Group,” beginning on page 29. The fact that the spread and impact of Conficker.D has been largely contained since then, as shown in Figure 54, is a testament to the working group’s effectiveness.

Win32/Conficker.E: Minor Release

Worm:Win32/Conficker.E was discovered on April 8, 2009, with the existing Microsoftdefinitions initially detecting it as Worm:Win32/Conficker.gen!A. Conficker.E only infectscomputers that have previously been infected with earlier Conficker variants .B, .C, and.D and serves as an update mechanism for those variants. The Conficker.E installer wasprogrammed to delete itself on May 3, 2009, but it leaves behind a component (detectedas Worm:Win32/Conficker.E.dll) that enables P2P communication similar to that used byConficker.D.

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Rogue Security Software Still a Significant Threat

Encyclopedia Rogue security software—software that displays false or misleading alerts about infections Win32/FakeXPA: A rogue security software family that claims to scan or vulnerabilities on the victim’s computer and offers to fix the supposed problems for a for malware and then demands price—has become one of the most common methods that attackers use to swindle money that the user pay to remove non- from victims. These are programs that masquerade as legitimate security programs offering existent threats. Some variants unlawfully use Microsoft logos and protection from malware, spyware, and other threats, but actually use social engineering to trademarks. obtain money from victims, and offer poor or nonexistent protection. Microsoft security Win32/Yektel: A family of trojans products detected rogue security software–related malware on 13.4 million computers in that display fake warnings of 1H09, down from 16.8 million in 2H08—an improvement, but still a significant threat. At spyware or malware in an attempt to lure the user into installing or least part of the decline may be due to browser-based anti-malware features, such as the paying money to register rogue Internet Explorer 8 SmartScreen Filter, which protect users from exposure to threats like security products such as Win32/ FakeXPA. rogue security software before they can become infected. (See “Analysis of Malware Hosts,” beginning on page 87, for more information.) A rogue security software family, Win32/ Win32/Winwebsec: A family of rogue security software programs FakeXPA, was the sixth-most prevalent threat detected by Microsoft desktop security that have been distributed with products worldwide in 1H09; two others, Win32/Yektel and Win32/Winwebsec, ranked several different names. The user interface varies to reflect each seventeenth and twenty-first, respectively. variant’s individual branding. http://www.microsoft.com/av

Rogue security software programs typically mimic the general look and feel of legitimate security software, claiming to detect a large number of nonexistent threats and urging the user to “activate” the software to remove them. Some families emulate the appearance of the Windows Security Center or unlawfully use trademarks and icons to misrepre- sent themselves. Rogue security software spreads through familiar malware distribution

100 January through June 2009

mechanisms, like spam and exploits, and through customized tactics, like a fake Web-based security scanner. After installation, some rogue security software families take otheractions to evade detection or to frighten the user into paying. For example, some variantsof Win32/Winwebsec, which was added to the MSRT in May 2009, attempts to block mostother programs from executing, which not only helps convince the user to pay for the “fullversion” of the software to repair the damage but also makes it difficult to use legitimatesecurity tools to remove the malware.Figure 56. Win32/Winwebsec blocks common programs,such as the Command Prompt, from executing.

Though fooling users into paying for worthless software remains the primary goal of mostrogue security software, several recently released families have begun to branch out and Encyclopediaexhibit behaviors common to other threats, such as downloading additional malware to Win32/Koobface: A multi-a victim’s computer. Win32/Winwebsec has been observed to download Win32/Koobface— component family of malwarewhich itself sometimes displays pop-up advertisements for rogue security software. used to compromise computers and use them to perform variousWin32/InternetAntivirus, which was added to the MSRT in June 2009, downloads the malicious tasks. It spreads throughpassword stealer Win32/Chadem. (For more information about malware that downloads the internal messaging systems ofother malware, see “Threat Combinations,” on page 67.) popular social networking sites. Win32/InternetAntivirus: A rogueRogue security software infections tend to be concentrated in certain geographic areas, security software program thattypically Western societies and other English-speaking regions. For example, rogue secu- uses several different names. It also displays a fake “Windowsrity software families account for 5 of the top 25 families detected in the United Kingdom, Security Center” message.but only 1 of the top 25 in Russia, and none in China. Unlike many other types of malware, Win32/Chadem: A trojan thatrogue security software relies heavily on user interaction to spread, which means that it is steals password details from anmost effective when presented in a language that the victim understands. Although localized infected computer by monitoring network traffic associated with FTPvariants exist, most rogue security software is written in English, though not necessarily by connections.native speakers. Rogue security software also tends to target wealthier societies and societies http://www.microsoft.com/avthat are more accustomed to paying for software with credit cards. In Norway, which hasone of the highest per-capita GDPs in the world, 7 of the top 25 families are rogue securitysoftware, whereas in China, where credit cards are relatively rare, none of the top 25 fami-lies are rogue security software. (For more information about threats around the world, see“Appendix B: Threat Assessments for Individual Locations,” beginning on page 181.)

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Automated SQL Injection Attacks

SQL injection is a technique used by attackers to damage or steal data residing in databases that use Structured Query Language (SQL) syntax to control information storage and retrieval. SQL injection usually involves using a mechanism such as a text field in a Web form to directly pass malicious SQL code to a program or script that queries a database. If the program or script does not properly validate the input, the attacker may be able to execute arbitrary database commands, such as deleting tables or altering sensitive records.24 Figure 57. Example of a simple SQL injection attack

SQL injection has been around for many years, but until recently it was mostly used in isolated efforts to attack individual servers on the Internet. Beginning in late 2007, however, attack- ers began to use automated tools to compromise large numbers of Web sites through SQL injection in an attempt to spread malware. The technique has also been used to conduct targeted attacks, including attacks against the Web sites of major antivirus vendors. Web applications often construct pages dynamically as they are requested, by retrieving information from a database and using it to populate the page. The goal of the automated mass SQL injection tool is to insert malicious HTML and JavaScript code into the database so that it becomes a part of every page requested by visitors to the site, a technique called second-order cross-site scripting (XSS). The tool is believed to begin its attack by conducting a Web search for URLs that take user input through URI query strings (such as http://www.example.com/page.aspx?id=12345, where id is a parameter and 12345 is its value). The tool performs some simple tests to determine which of these Web pages may be vulnerable to SQL injection and then tries multiple SQL injection payloads in order to discover some details about the SQL server and account used by the Web page. It then uses a SQL injection payload to append

24 For a more in-depth explanation of SQL injection and how to guard against it, see “SQL Injection,” in Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Books Online, at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms161953.aspx.

102 January through June 2009

malicious JavaScript code within HTML <script> tags to every string column in everytable in the database. When a site visitor requests a page that includes some of this com-promised string data, unless the page checks for and disallows XSS, the malicious scriptexecutes in the visitor’s Web browser and attempts to use multiple browser-related exploitsto download and install malware.Figure 58. How the mass SQL injection tool works

Microsoft has published Security Advisory 954462, which includes more informationabout this class of attacks, and offers guidance for detecting and defending against them.The following TechNet blog entries also contain further in-depth information:◆◆ Anatomy of a SQL Injection Incident (March 14, 2008)

◆◆ Anatomy of a SQL Injection Incident, Part 2: Meat (March 15, 2008)

Win32/Koobface Attacks Social Networks

Win32/Koobface is a multi-component family of malware that targets users of popularsocial networking Web sites, such as Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter. Though it is usuallyreferred to as a worm, Koobface is actually a collection of components that performdifferent tasks on compromised computers, such as downloading and hosting malware,stealing passwords and other sensitive data, and displaying advertisements for roguesecurity software. The ability to remove Koobface was added to the MSRT in March 2009.

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Overall, Koobface was the twenty-fifth most prevalent family removed from computers by Microsoft desktop security products in 1H09. Win32/Koobface spreads by sending messages to a victim’s social network contacts with text, such as “You should watch my latest video,” accompanied by a URL. Recipients who visit the URL are confronted with a message telling them that they must download an updated version of Adobe Flash Player to watch the video. The supplied executable is actu- ally the Koobface installer. Figure 59. The Win32/Koobface installer masquerades as an updated version of Adobe Flash Player.

The bogus Web page and installer are themselves typically hosted on computers infected with Koobface, which includes a component that secretly installs a Web server on a com- promised computer.

The Win32/Waledac Botnet and Spam

Win32/Waledac is a trojan that is used to send spam. It also has the ability to download and execute arbitrary files, harvest e-mail addresses from the local computer, perform denial-of-service (DoS) attacks, proxy network traffic, and steal passwords. The ability to

104 January through June 2009

remove Waledac was added to the MSRT in April 2009, and it was the twenty-fourth-mostdetected family by the MSRT that month. EncyclopediaWhile early versions of Win32/Waledac were released into the wild as early as December Win32/Nuwar: A family of2007, the family first drew significant attention in December 2008, when attackers sent trojan droppers that install a distributed P2P downloaderChristmas-themed postcards through e-mail to spread it to computers. A spam campaign trojan. This downloader trojan inin early 2009 used a false report of a terrorist attack, purportedly from the Reuters news turn downloads an e-mail worm component.agency, to trick people into downloading the malware (which masqueraded as an updateto Adobe Flash Player, like Win32/Koobface). For another spam campaign, the Waledac Win32/Conficker: A worm that spreads by exploiting ainstaller masqueraded as a trial version of a program that supposedly allows one to spy on vulnerability addressed by Securityother people’s mobile phone text messages. Social engineering tactics such as these—holiday Bulletin MS08-067. Some variants also spread via removable drivesthemes, provocative-sounding bogus news reports, invitations to illicit activity—are and by exploiting weak passwords.familiar to security researchers as tactics that other malware families (notably Win32/Nuwar, It disables several important systemthe so-called “storm worm”25) have used in the past to build botnets—networks of compro- services and security products and downloads arbitrary files.mised computers that are controlled remotely and surreptitiously by one or more individuals Win32/Bredolab: A downloaderto perform various criminal activities. that can access and execute arbitrary files from a remote host.Waledac is a complex trojan that bears some of the hallmarks of legitimate, professionally Bredolab has been observed todeveloped software, such as an internal versioning system that researchers have used to download several other malwaretrack the malware’s development, beginning with version 0 in December 2007. Version 15, families to infected computers.

released in the last week of November 2008, was the first version to support “labels,” which Win32/Rugzip: A trojan that downloads other malware fromallow the botnet operators to identify and segment groups of controlled computers in the predefined Web sites. Rugzipnetwork and the tasks delegated to them. This factor and others suggest that the creators may itself be installed by otherof Waledac are using an affiliate program to provide a financial incentive for other parties malware. Once it has performed its malicious routines, it deletes itselfto distribute it, an illustration of the way participants in the new, profit-oriented malware to avoid detection.economy have adopted tactics used by legitimate businesses. Win32/Fakespypro: A rogue security family that falsely claimsA variant of Win32/Conficker has been observed to download an encrypted copy that the affected computer isof Waledac from a malware hosting site using a private key, suggesting that the authors infected with malware andof Waledac appear to have established a relationship of some sort with other malware encourages the user to buy a promoted product it claims willauthors. Trojan downloaders, such as Win32/Bredolab, have also been seen to download clean the computer.Waledac binaries from the same site, bearing a different label. http://www.microsoft.com/avWaledac includes the ability to download files, which it uses to update itself to the latestversion. Waledac has also been known to download and install other malware, notablyrogue security software such as Win32/Rugzip and Win32/FakeSpypro.Microsoft Malware Protection Center researchers have written about Win32/Waledac atthe MMPC blog (http://blogs.technet.com/mmpc). For more information, see the follow-ing blog entries:◆◆ Where’s Waledac? (April 14, 2009)

◆◆ Where is Waledac—Episode II (May 7, 2009)

25 For more information, see “A Focus on Win32/Nuwar (The ‘Storm Worm’),” in Microsoft Security Intelligence Report, Volume 4 (July through December 2007), page 60.

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Rogue ISP 3FN Taken Down

In early June 2009, a U.S. federal district court judge in California ordered Internet ser- vice provider 3FN disconnected from the Internet at the request of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The FTC presented evidence that Pricewert LLC, the company that operated 3FN, actively recruited and colluded with “criminals seeking to distribute illegal, malicious, and harmful content including child pornography, spyware, viruses, trojan horses, phishing, and botnet command-and-control servers,” according to the FTC. The complaint alleges that Pricewert actively shielded its criminal clientele by either ignoring take-down requests issued by the online security community or shifting its criminal elements to other IP addresses it controlled to evade detection. The volume of spam as measured by Forefront Online Protection for Exchange was depressed for weeks after McColo, another rogue ISP, was disconnected from the Internet in November 2008,26 and indeed FOPE detected a small dip in spam following the 3FN takedown, as well. Unlike with McColo, however, spam volumes almost immediately returned to normal this time, suggesting that spammers are learning to diversify their hosting arrangements to avoid service disruptions.

Figure 60. Inbound e-mail traffic to FOPE servers, indexed to the period average, in 1H09

60% 3FN Takedown

26 For more information about the McColo takedown, see “Spam Volume Drops 46 percent When Hosting Provider Goes Offline,” on page 113 of Microsoft Security Intelligence Report, Volume 6 (July through December 2008).

106 January through June 2009

Prolific Spammer Alan Ralsky Pleads Guilty

In June 2009, 64-year-old Alan Ralsky of Michigan, United States, pleaded guilty in federalcourt to charges that he ran a multimillion dollar international “pump and dump” stockfraud scheme involving the illegal use of bulk commercial e-mail. Federal investigatorsdescribed Ralsky as one of the world’s top spammers.27Ralsky and his son-in-law Scott K. Bradley, 38, also of Michigan, pleaded guilty to wirefraud, money laundering, violation of the U.S. federal CAN-SPAM Act, and other charges.Ralsky faces up to 87 months in prison and a U.S.$1 million fine.The U.S. Department of Justice characterized Ralsky as one of the world’s most notoriousillegal spammers. “Today Ralsky, his son-in-law Scott Bradley, and three of their cocon-spirators stand convicted for their roles in running an international spamming operationthat sent billions of illegal e-mail advertisements to pump up Chinese ‘penny’ stocks andthen reap profits by causing trades in these same stocks while others bought at the inflatedprices,” said U.S. Attorney Terrence Berg in a Justice Department press release. “Usingthe Internet to manipulate the stock market through spam e-mail campaigns is a seriouscrime, and this case serves notice that federal law enforcement has [both] the capabilityand the will to successfully investigate, prosecute and punish such cybercrimes.”According to court records, Ralsky and his associates used botnets consisting of tens of thou-sands of compromised computers to send spam, earning millions of dollars in the process.Spam researchers have been tracking Ralsky for more than a decade. According to a 2002article in The Detroit News, Ralsky’s spamming career began in 1997 after losing his licenseto sell insurance.

27 For more information about the arrests, see http://www.usdoj.gov/opa/pr/2009/June/09-ag-615.html.

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Strategies, Mitigations, and Countermeasures

◆◆ Demand digitally signed code from software vendors. Although signed code is not always safe, signed code is still much safer on average than unsigned code. Code sign- ing provides a strong link to the author of the code and helps identify files that have been tampered, infected, or have other file corruption. In 1H09, about 97 percent of unique threat files detected were unsigned. Excluding the Win32/GameVance and Win32/Wintrim families, 99.9 percent of all remaining threat files were not code-signed. ◆◆ Software vendors should virus-scan and then code-sign all their binary files and instal- lation packages. This helps prevent vendors from accidentally shipping malicious code and also provides a clear link from the files to the vendor. Antivirus vendors can use signed code from other software vendors to prevent and detect false positive detections and to protect their own code from tampering. Nevertheless, as the data presented here makes clear, antivirus vendors should never automatically assume that a signed file cannot be malware. ◆◆ Use an e-mail authentication system, like Sender Policy Framework (SPF) or DomainKeys, to identify mail and help reduce domain spoofing. Implementing e-mail authentica- tion is not particularly expensive or difficult, yet is still not done nearly enough. ◆◆ Maintain a strong e-mail scanning presence at the edge of the logical network perim- eter. Edge filtering remains the most productive of the filtering techniques, accounting for more than 85 percent of spam filtering. ◆◆ Consider disabling autorun functionality in your environment to decrease the risk it presents. If you cannot disable autorun due to business reasons, ensure that users are aware that malware can abuse the autorun feature and that they should only select autorun options they recognize. ◆◆ Enforce the use of strong passwords for network shares.

◆◆ Educate users not to click links or call phone numbers from e-mails received from financial institutions but to instead call the numbers that they have on file. Social engi- neering attacks over e-mail (phishing) and social engineering attacks over telephone (sometimes called vishing) are easy to mitigate by using a known e-mail address or phone number, often included on the back of the credit card or bank statement. ◆◆ Users who enjoy virtual worlds and online gaming are subject to targeted attacks to obtain user names and passwords, enabling the criminal to steal virtual assets or other account information. For information on ways to reduce this risk, read http://blogs. technet.com/mmpc/archive/2008/09/03/helpful-suggestions-to-protect-you-from- game-password-stealers.aspx. ◆◆ If infected, download and run the Malicious Software Removal Tool (http://www. microsoft.com/security/malwareremove) or make a free call (in North America) to 1-866-PC-SAFETY.

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◆◆ Home computer users can help keep their machines and the computing ecosystem clean by using the free Microsoft Security Essentials (http://www.microsoft.com/ security_essentials/) antivirus program, scheduled for release in many languages in September 2009.◆◆ Insist that your mail servers use both inbound and outbound authentication controls, to protect your brand from harm (a technique called brandjacking) and to keep your customers safe from e-mail spoofing. The most popular method for this is the Sender ID Framework (http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/safety/technologies/senderid/ resources.mspx).◆◆ Use a mail client that actively blocks active content and the automatic opening of attachments. Current versions of Microsoft Outlook, Hotmail, and Outlook Express, in conjunction with the security zone settings in Internet Explorer 8, can help deter IFrame attacks and prevent the unintentional opening of executable attachments.◆◆ Inform users that malware can be installed through instant messaging (on both com- puters and cell phones) and social networking sites, in addition to e-mail. Users should only accept files from people they know.

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110 Microsoft Security Engineering Center

The Microsoft Security Engineering Center helps to protect Microsoft customers by deliveringinherently more secure products and services. MSEC’s three subteams work closely together andwith other groups at Microsoft to promote secure software development by focusing on the threetraditional pillars of IT management: people, process, and technology.

The Security Assurance team helps teams ship products that are fundamentally secure by ensuringthe requirements of the Security Development Lifecycle are met or exceeded. Security Assurance isinstrumental in driving security innovations, processes, and technologies into products throughoutMicrosoft. Security Assurance influences the design and strategy of the SDL to ensure it staysrelevant and can be implemented in a practical way.

The Security Development Lifecycle team manages updating, releasing, and evangelizing theMicrosoft Security Development Lifecycle—the industry-leading software security process.The SDL has played a critical role in embedding security and pr ivacy into Microsoft software andculture, leading to measurable security and privacy improvements in flagship products such asWindows Vista, Microsoft Office, and SQL Server.

A n exploit is malicious code that takes advantage of software vulnerabilities to infect a computer without the user’s consent and often without the user’s knowledge. Exploits are often distributed through Web pages, although attack- ers also use a number of other distribution methods, such as e-mail and instant messaging (IM) services. Malware distributors use various techniques to attempt to direct Internet users to Web sites that have been compromised or are intentionally hosting hostile code. The malware server hosts one or more exploits that are designed to use specific vulnerabilities to install themselves secretly on the user’s computer, a tactic that is some- times called a drive-by download. (See “Analysis of Drive-By Download Pages,” beginning on page 118, for a more in-depth look at this tactic.) The vulnerabilities targeted by these exploits are typically found in Web browsers themselves or in browser add-ons, such as ActiveX® controls that enable users to experience popular types of media content within the browser environment. In some cases, these add-ons are preinstalled by the computer manufacturer before the computer is sold. The user may not even use the vulnerable add-on or be aware that it is installed. Much of this software has no facility for updating itself, so that even when the software vendor publishes an update that fixes the vulner- ability, the user may not know that the update is available or how to obtain it, and remains vulnerable to attack. (See “Update Clients and Services,” on page 161, for information about the use of Windows Update and Microsoft Update to distribute kill bits for vulner- able ActiveX controls.) Most malicious Web sites use exploit kits that package together several exploits. Each kit is designed to offer malware distributors optimal levels of applicability, stealth, reliability, and detection evasion. Exploit kit creators continually update their kits, removing poorly performing exploits and replacing them with new ones. The exploits included in a kit typically target vulnerabilities affecting several different platforms, browsers, and add-ons from different software vendors, in an effort to ensnare as many potential victims as pos- sible. The most highly sought-after exploits are zero-day exploits, which take advantage of undisclosed or newly disclosed vulnerabilities before the vendor releases a security update for it. Exploits that initially appear in the wild as zero-day exploits often remain active long after the update for the vulnerability is made available, because many users install updates only sporadically or not at all, and remain vulnerable. Even today, exploits for vulner- abilities fixed in 2003 are still being seen in the wild. This underscores the importance of staying up to date on all installed browser add-ons, in addition to installing updates for the browser, operating system, and other installed programs. To make this process easier, some security companies offer update management products that aggregate and distribute security updates published by different software vendors.

112 January through June 2009

Top Browser-Based Exploits

Information about how attackers are exploiting browsers and add-ons can provide secu-rity researchers with a greater understanding of the risk posed by drive-by downloads.To assess the relative prevalence of browser-based exploits in 1H09, Microsoft analyzeda sample of data obtained from customer-reported incidents, submissions of maliciouscode, and Windows error reports. The data encompasses multiple versions of Windowsand Internet Explorer, from Windows XP to Windows Vista,28 and browser add-ons frommany different vendors. It also includes data from third-party browsers (such as Maxthonand UUSee Player) that host the Internet Explorer rendering engine, called Trident.Here and throughout this section, exploits affecting vulnerabilities in Microsoft softwareare labeled with the Microsoft Security Bulletin number pertaining to the vulnerability, ifapplicable.29 Exploits affecting third-party software are labeled with the CVE identifier per-taining to the vulnerability, if applicable.Figure 61 shows the browser-based exploits encountered by users in 1H09, ordered byfrequency.Figure 61. Browser-based exploits encountered, by percentage, in 1H09

CVE-2007-4105 CVE-2007-4816 (BaoFengStorm) (6.5%)

CVE-2007-5892 (SuperStar SSReader) (4.3%) GLChat_startNotify (4.8%)

CVE-2006-0003/MS06-014 (Microsoft Data Access Components) (4.5%)

Many of the more prevalent exploits encountered take advantage of vulnerabilities in pop-ular browser add-ons, with media players and games being frequent targets. As in 2H08, themost frequently exploited vulnerability in 1H09 was CVE-2007-0071, a vulnerability

in Adobe Flash Player, which accounted for 17.5 percent of the infected computers in the sample, up from 10.3 percent in 2H08. The next-most encountered exploit was for a vul- nerability in Ourgame GLWorld, an online gaming ActiveX control popular in China. It accounted for 10.0 percent of incidents, up from 7.8 percent in 2H08. CVE-2008-1309, a vulnerability in the RealPlayer browser add-on from RealNetworks that was second on the list in 2H08, fell to just 0.2 percent of incidents. Significant shifts such as these may be related to the tendency of exploit kit creators to frequently replace older exploits with newer ones, as explained earlier. As Figure 62 shows, the incidence of several of the most prevalent exploits varied significantly from month to month in 1H09. Figure 62. Top 10 browser-based exploits, by percentage of all exploits each month, in 1H09

Jan-09 Feb-09 Mar-09 Apr-09 May-09 Jun-09

CVE-2007-0071, the Adobe Flash Player vulnerability that was exploited the most overall in the sample, accounted for 27.6 percent of all exploits in February, but dropped to just 1.7 percent of the sample by June. Meanwhile, CVE-2009-0927, a vulnerability in Adobe Reader that first appeared in the April sample, rose to become the most exploited vulner- ability in the June sample, with 19.5 percent of that month’s total. Adobe Systems released a security update addressing the CVE-2007-0071 vulnerability in April 2008,30 so the value 30 For details and to obtain the security update, visit http://www.adobe.com/support/security/bulletins/apsb08-11.html.

114 January through June 2009

of CVE-2007-0071 exploits to attackers can be expected to have diminished as more users

updated their versions of Flash Player. By contrast, CVE-2009-0927, a vulnerability in theAdobe Reader browser add-on, was first identified in March 2009 and was addressed by asecurity update released the following month.31 Its rise in prevalence suggests that attackershave taken advantage of the fact that comparatively few users have installed the securityupdate addressing the vulnerability.

Browser-Based Exploits by System Locale

Malware distributors target different parts of the world unequally. Victims are typicallylured to exploit pages through a variety of methods, including phishing and hijacked Webpages. By nature, these lures tend to target specific segments of the global population.A phishing message written in German, for example, is more likely to be effective withpotential victims who speak German than with those who do not. Analyzing the systemlocale information included with Windows error reports can help illustrate the relativefrequency with which different locations around the world are being targeted.Figure 63 shows the browser-based exploits encountered by users in 1H09, ordered by thesystem locale of the victim.Figure 63. Browser-based exploits encountered, by system locale of victim, in 1H09

Other (13.2%) China (zh-CN) (53.6%)

Korea (ko-KR) (1.3%)

Russia (ru-RU) (1.9%) Japan (ja-JP) (2.6%)

United States (en-US) (27.5%)

The most common system locale for victims in 1H09 was zh-CN (Chinese language,China), accounting for 53.6 percent of all exploits in the sample, up from 25.6 percent in2H08. This rise was caused in part by a growth in the popularity of vulnerable versions ofseveral Chinese-language ActiveX controls, including the Ourgame GlobalLink gameclient and the BaoFeng media player. The second-most common locale was en-US (Englishlanguage, United States) at 27.5 percent, down from 32.4 percent and first place in 2H08.

31 For details and to obtain the security update, visit http://www.adobe.com/support/security/bulletins/apsb09-04.html.

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Browser-Based Exploits by Operating System and Software Vendor

Every browser-based exploit can be traced to a vulnerability in a specific piece of software. Comparing exploits that target Microsoft software to third-party exploits (those that target vulnerabilities in software produced by other vendors) suggests that the vulnerability land- scape of Windows Vista is very different from that of Windows XP. Figure 64 and Figure 65 show the relative percentages of exploits against vulnerabilities in Microsoft and third-party software in 1H09 on computers running Windows XP and Windows Vista, respectively. Figure 64. Browser-based exploits targeting Microsoft and third-party software on computers running Windows XP in 1H09

Microsoft (56.4%) 3rd Party (43.6%)

Microsoft (15.5%) 3rd Party (84.5%)

116 January through June 2009

In Windows XP, Microsoft vulnerabilities account for 56.4 percent of all attacks in the sample.In Windows Vista, the proportion of Microsoft vulnerabilities is much smaller, account-ing for just 15.5 percent of attacks in the sample. Overall, the share of exploits attributableto Microsoft vulnerabilities has risen on both platforms since 2H08, due to exploitation ofvulnerabilities in Internet Explorer that have been addressed by security bulletins MS08-078(released in December 2008) and MS09-002 (released in February 2009).Figure 66 and Figure 67 show the 10 vulnerabilities exploited most often in Windows XPand Windows Vista in 1H09, respectively.Figure 66. The 10 browser-based vulnerabilities exploited most often on computers running Windows XP,by percentage of all exploits, in 1H09

In Windows XP, Microsoft software accounts for 6 of the top 10 vulnerabilities, compared

to 1 in Windows Vista. These figures are consistent with 2H08, when Microsoft vulnerabilities accounted for 6 of the top 10 vulnerabilities exploited on Windows XP and zero of the top 10 in Windows Vista.

Analysis of Drive-By Download Pages

Drive-by download pages are usually hosted on legitimate Web sites to which an attacker has posted exploit code. Attackers gain access to legitimate sites through intrusion or by posting malicious code to a poorly secured Web form, like a comment field on a blog. Compromised sites can be hosted anywhere in the world and concern nearly any subject imaginable, making it difficult for even an experienced user to identify a compromised site from a list of search results. Search engines, such as Bing™ (formerly Live Search), have taken a number of measures to protect users from drive-by downloads.

118 January through June 2009

Figure 68. One example of a drive-by download attack

As Bing indexes the Web, pages are assessed for malicious elements or malicious behavior.Because the owners of compromised sites are usually victims themselves, the sites are notremoved from the Bing index. Instead, clicking the link in the list of search results displaysa prominent warning, saying that the page may contain malicious software, as shown inFigure 69. In 1H09, about 0.2 percent of the search results pages served to users by Bingcontained warnings about malicious sites.Figure 69. A drive-by download warning from Bing

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In most cases, the effect of a large drop in traffic originating from search engines (only about 2 percent of Bing users proceed to visit compromised sites after being shown the warning) serves to alert Webmasters that something has gone wrong. Bing works with Webmasters to inform them about compromised sites through the Bing Webmaster Center (http://webmaster.bing.com) and provides guidance for the removal of malicious code so that pages can be reenabled in the index. Bing reenables many such sites per day following requests from Webmasters, indicating that such malware detection efforts can have a posi- tive effect on the safety of Web sites and their customers. Bing detects a large number of drive-by download pages each month, with several hun- dred thousand sites hosting active drive-by pages being tracked at any given time. Overall, the number of Web sites affected has remained fairly consistent, with 0.16 percent of all Web sites hosting at least one malicious page.

Trojan Downloaders & Droppers is the most frequently encountered category amongdrive-by download sites, with 40.7 percent of the total, twice as large as the category’s shareof threats detected by Microsoft desktop anti-malware products. Trojan downloaders arewell suited for delivery by drive-by download because they can be used to install otherthreats on infected computers. Miscellaneous Trojans, Miscellaneous Potentially UnwantedSoftware, and Password Stealers & Monitoring Tools all account for significant percentagesof the remaining threats, consistent with their prevalence among desktop threats.

Geographic Distribution of Drive-By Download Sites

While Bing has detected drive-by download sites all over the world, the risk is not spreadequally among Internet users worldwide. Users in some parts of the world are more at riskthan in others. Figure 71 shows the portion of Web sites in each country-code top leveldomain (ccTLD) that were found to be hosting drive-by download pages in 1H09.Figure 71. Percentage of Web sites in each country-code top-level domain (ccTLD) that hosted drive-by downloadpages in 1H09

Percent of Sites in ccTLD with Drive-By Download Pages

10% + .125% to .25%

5% to 10% .063% to .125%

2% to 5% .031% to .063%

1% to 2% .016% to .031%

.5% to 1% >0% to .016%

.25% to .5% 0%

Insufficient data www.microsoft.com/sir

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Among ccTLDs that included at least one site hosting drive-by download pages, percent- ages varied greatly. More than 2.4 percent of the sites in the .th ccTLD (associated with Thailand) were found to be hosting drive-by download pages, but less than 0.1 percent of the sites in some other large ccTLDs, like .fr (associated with France), were similarly affected. (Note that Figure 71 does not reflect the physical locations of hosted sites; not all ccTLD sites are hosted in the locations to which the ccTLDs themselves are assigned. However, most ccTLD sites are targeted at Internet users in a particular country/region and are typically written in an appropriate language, so Figure 71 can be taken as a rea- sonable indicator of how users in different parts of the world are more or less at risk of encountering drive-by download pages.) By comparison, generic and sponsored top-level domains, which do not serve particular countries/regions, do not display the same level of variance as ccTLDs do, as illustrated by Figure 72. Figure 72. Percentage of Web sites in each generic top-level domain that hosted drive-by download pages in 1H09

Percentage of sites hosting

The .int TLD, which is reserved for organizations established by international treaty between or among national governments, contains the highest percentage of sites host- ing drive-by download pages, with 0.99 percent of all active .int sites found to contain such pages. (Due to its strict eligibility requirements, .int is also one of the smallest of the generic and sponsored TLDs, with an active site count in the hundreds, and so may be considered a statistical outlier.) Most of the more heavily used generic and sponsored

122 January through June 2009

TLDs are clustered between 0.1 and 0.4 percent. Several generic and sponsored TLDswere not found to be hosting any Web sites with drive-by download pages, including .jobs,.museum, and .mil.Some network operators (ISPs, data centers, backbone providers, and similar operators)are particularly prone to providing hosting services to sites containing drive-by downloadpages, possibly due to poor security practices. As Figure 73 shows, 17.8 percent of the siteshosted by one network operator were found to contain drive-by pages, with several othersshowing site infection rates between 4 and 8 percent.Figure 73. The 10 network operators providing hosting services to the largest percentage ofcompromised hosts in 1H09

Distribution of Exploit Servers

Most drive-by download attacks use malware distribution networks, similar to the onedepicted in Figure 68 on page 119. Rather than being completely self-contained, theexploit code itself is hosted on a different Web site and is exposed through the compro-mised Web page using a technique like a URL embedded in malicious script code or aninline frame. (An inline frame, or IFrame, is used to load a separate HTML page into awindow on the current page. Inline frames can be as small as a single pixel to avoid detec-tion.) Analyzing the URLs that host the malicious code or inline frames themselves revealsthat a small handful of exploit servers host the exploits used by the vast majority of drive-bydownload pages worldwide, as shown in Figure 74.

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Figure 74. Percentile distribution of exploit servers by the number of drive-by pages pointing to each one, 1H09

500,000 Number of Pages Pointing to Exploit Server

400,000

300,000

200,000

100,000

0 100% 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% Percentile

In 1H09, the top exploit servers—those that provided exploit code for more than 10,000 drive-by download pages each—made up about 11.0 percent of all exploit servers detected but accounted for 74.0 percent of drive-by download pages. This is consistent with 2H08, when the top servers accounted for 12.8 percent of exploit servers and 84.1 percent of drive-by download pages. One significant change is that the number of drive-by pages served by the exploit servers at the very top of the curve has increased exponentially. In 2H08, the most heavily used exploit server in the world had a reach of around 100,000 pages. Most exploit servers still have a reach well below this, but the reach of the top server is much greater in 1H09, at more than 450,000 pages. Despite this, very few of the servers at the top of the list in 2H08 remain there in 1H09. Malware distribution networks tend to be moving targets, with servers constantly appearing and disappearing in different locations. One illustration of this phenomenon, and a contributing factor to the increased reach of the top servers, was a series of attacks in April and May 2009 in which huge numbers of legitimate Web pages were compromised over a very short period of time. Figure 75 gives an example of one of these attacks.

0 18-Apr 20-Apr 22-Apr 24-Apr 26-Apr 28-Apr 30-Apr 2-May 4-May 6-May 8-May 10-May 12-May 14-May 16-May 18-May 20-May 22-May 24-May 26-May 28-May 30-May 1-Jun 3-Jun 5-Jun 7-Jun 9-Jun 11-Jun 13-Jun 15-JunThe blue line shows the number of drive-by download pages detected daily during atwo-month period pointing to a malicious script hosted at 3b3.org, a typical heavily usedexploit server. The reach of this server remained steady throughout the period, never vary-ing by more than about 1,000 pages from the mean. By contrast, the red line shows drive-by pages pointing to martuz.cn, an exploit server used in one of the attacks mentioned pre-viously. After being detected for the first time on Friday, May 15, its reach jumped quicklyto more than 21,000 active compromised pages by Monday, May 18, before dropping tojust 100 active pages the following day, and none after that. Attacks like these have beenseen before, but the speed at which the attackers are able to infect legitimate pages is a newdevelopment, perhaps made possible by tools such as the sort examined in “AutomatedSQL Injection Attacks,” beginning on page 102.

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The TLD distribution of exploit servers is very different from that of the compromised pages that point to them, as illustrated by Figure 76. Figure 76. Drive-by exploit servers, by TLD, in 1H09

Other (8.9%)

.info (2.3%) .biz (3.8%) .cn (39.6%) .org (4.1%)

.ru (6.1%)

None (IP only) (7.9%)

.net (8.1%) .com (19.3%)

Whereas drive-by download pages can be found in quantity in the majority of generic, sponsored, and country-code TLDs, exploit servers are concentrated in a much smaller number of TLDs, led by .cn (39.6 percent) and .com (19.3 percent). About 8 percent of exploit servers did not use the Domain Name System (DNS) and were contacted using only IP addresses. Most of the TLDs hosting significant numbers of exploit servers are among the most heavily populated TLDs in the world.

Document File Format Exploits

Increasingly, attackers are using common file formats as transmission vectors for exploits. Most modern e-mail and instant messaging programs are configured to block the trans- mission of potentially dangerous files by extension, such as .exe, .com, and .scr, which have historically been misused to transmit malware. However, these same programs typically permit the transmission of popular Microsoft Office binary file formats (including .doc, .xls, and .ppt). These formats are used legitimately by many people every day to share information and get work done, so blocking them is often not practical. This has made them an attractive target for exploitation. This class of vulnerability can be described as parser vulnerabilities, wherein the attacker creates a specially crafted document that takes advantage of an error in how the code pro- cesses or parses the file format. Many of these formats are complex and designed for speed, and an attacker can create a file with a malformed section that exploits a vulnerability in the program.

126 January through June 2009

There are two common attack scenarios. In one, the user receives an e-mail message witha document attachment. The e-mail message may look legitimate and may appear to comefrom someone the user knows. In the other common scenario, a user browsing the Webencounters a malicious or compromised Web site. The malicious code forces the browserto navigate to a malicious document, which is opened by the associated program. In bothscenarios, when the document is opened, the exploit is activated and it extracts malwareburied inside the document. Real-time antivirus scanning can help mitigate the dangerfrom these attacks in some cases.

Microsoft Office Format Exploits

To assess the use of file formats as an attack vector, Microsoft analyzed a sample of severalhundred files that were used for successful attacks in 1H09. The data set was taken fromsubmissions of malicious code sent to Microsoft from customers worldwide.In total, exploits for 11 different vulnerabilities were identified in the sample set, as shownin Figure 77.Figure 77. Vulnerabilities exploited in Microsoft Office file formats

Of these 11 vulnerabilities, 9 had security updates available at the time of attack. Theaffected users were exposed because they had not applied the updates. Two vulnerabili-ties (CVE-2009-0238 in Excel and CVE-2009-0556 in PowerPoint) were used in zero-dayexploits before security updates were available. Office 2000, Office XP, Office 2003, and the2007 Microsoft Office system were each affected by at least 1 of the 11 vulnerabilities (seeFigure 81, on page 130, for details).

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Most of the vulnerabilities exploited in the sample were several years old, and more than half were first identified in 2006. As Figure 78 illustrates, 71.0 percent of attacks exploited a single vulnerability (CVE-2006-2492, the Malformed Object Pointer Vulnerability in Microsoft Office Word) for which a security fix had been available for three years by the end of 1H09. Figure 78. Microsoft Office file format exploits encountered, by percentage, in 1H09

Figure 79 shows Microsoft Office file format exploits ordered by the system locale of the victim. The most common locale for victims was en-US (English language, United States), accounting for 35.0 percent of all incidents, followed by zh-CN (Chinese language, China), with 18.1 percent of incidents. Figure 79. Microsoft Office file format exploits encountered, by system locale of victim, in 1H09

Russia (ru-RU) (7.3%)

China (zh-CN) (18.1%) Taiwan (zh-TW) (15.6%)

128 January through June 2009

Users who do not keep their Office program installations up to date with service packs andsecurity updates are at increased risk of attack. Figure 80 compares attacks observed in thesample set against Windows and Office during 1H09.Figure 80. Microsoft Office file format exploits encountered, by date of last Windows or Office program update,in 1H09 Oﬃce 2003 RTM, 60% October 2003

Date of Last Oﬃce or Windows Application Update

The horizontal axis shows the last date that the computers in the sample set were updatedwith security updates for Windows and Office. For example, just 7.6 percent of Officeattacks observed in 1H09 affected Office program installations that had been updatedbetween July 2008 and June 2009 (in other words, within one year of the end of 1H09).The majority of Office attacks observed in 1H09 (55.5 percent) affected Office programinstallations that had last been updated between July 2003 and June 2004. Most of theseattacks affected Office 2003 users who had not applied a single service pack or other secu-rity update since the original release of Office 2003 in October 2003.By contrast, the computers in the sample set were significantly more likely to have hadrecent Windows security updated applied. More than a third of the Office attacks observedin 1H09 affected computers running versions of Windows that had been updated withinthe previous 12 months. The median amount of time since the last operating system updatefor computers in the sample was 1.2 years, compared to 5.6 years for the most recent Officeprogram update. This is not because users who apply Windows security updates are atgreater risk of attack, but it does help illustrate the fact that users can keep Windows rigor-ously up to date and still face increased risk from exploits unless they also update theirother programs regularly. (For information about the online update services Microsoftoffers, see “Usage Trends for Windows Update and Microsoft Update,” on page 161.)

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To further illustrate the importance of applying all service packs and other security updates, Figure 81 and Figure 82 compare the relative levels of vulnerability of different versions of Microsoft Office as originally released and with the most recent service pack for each version installed. Figure 81. Vulnerabilities affecting RTM versions of Office 2000–2007

The RTM versions of Office 2000, Office XP, and Office 2003 are each affected by all of thevulnerabilities seen in the sample set, and the RTM version of Office 2007 is affected by 4of the 11 vulnerabilities. If the Office 2003 RTM users in the sample had installed SP3 andno other security updates, they would have been protected against 98 percent of observedattacks; likewise, Office 2007 RTM users would have been protected from 99 percent ofattacks by installing SP2.However, merely installing service packs is often not enough to provide an adequate levelof protection against attacks, especially for older program versions. Office 2000 and OfficeXP are each affected by all 11 of the vulnerabilities exploited in the sample, even with thelatest service pack installed. Users of any of these Office versions who install all securityupdates as they are released (for example, by configuring their computers to use MicrosoftUpdate (http://update.microsoft.com) instead of Windows Update) are protected from all 11of these vulnerabilities, as of July 2009.As Figure 83 illustrates, nearly 90 percent of Microsoft Office exploits involve either a trojandownloader or dropper, or a backdoor. These kinds of threats allow attackers to accesscompromised systems later to install more malware.Figure 83. Categories of payloads delivered by Microsoft Office exploits in 1H09

Among trojan categories, the top 10 families together account for more than 70 percent of Encyclopedia payloads using trojans. Win32/Buzus, the most prevalent family on the list, holds the top spot because it was used in a large number of apparently related .xls file exploits detected Win32/Buzus: A trojan that downloads malware known as in April 2009. “SpywareIsolator,” a rogue security software program. Figure 84. Top 10 trojan families used in Office file exploits in 1H09

In the Backdoors category, Win32/Poisonivy, the single most prevalent family overall, accounted for 61.4 percent of all backdoor payloads and 21 percent of all exploits. Figure 85. Top 10 backdoor families used in Office file exploits in 1H09

Security Breach Trends

O ver the last few years, laws have been passed in a number of jurisdictions around the world requiring that affected individuals be notified when an organization loses control of personally identifiable information (PII) with which it has been entrusted. These mandatory notifications offer uniqueinsights into what goes wrong with information security. They differ from surveys in thatthe information offered is not from self-selected respondents, and, for a given set of criteria,participation is mandated by law.Since 2005, volunteer security researchers have tracked worldwide reports of such datasecurity breaches and recorded them in the Data Loss Database (DataLossDB) athttp://datalossdb.org. DataLossDB volunteers collect data by monitoring data breachreports published by news media outlets or other information sources and by filing formalinformation requests with the governments of several jurisdictions that have mandatorynotification laws. Since 2008, the DataLossDB has been maintained by the Open SecurityFoundation (OSF) (http://www.opensecurityfoundation.org), a nonprofit organizationdedicated to compiling community-sourced information about security vulnerabilitiesand data breaches.This section of the Security Intelligence Report uses the information in the DataLossDB toexamine the types of breach incidents from around the world that took place in 1H09 andearlier. The data, despite containing a lot of valuable information, is not perfect. It is not asdetailed as might be hoped for, and laws in different jurisdictions contain different triggerclauses for when notice must be given. Nevertheless, the data is of sufficient quality to lenditself to an effective analysis of security failures.Breach incidents are recorded in the DataLossDB using a common format that can tracksuch details as the date and location of the incident, the companies or organizationsinvolved, the number of records affected, and any arrests or lawsuits connected with theincident. Incidents are classified using a list of 23 individual breach types, which for thepurposes of this analysis have been grouped into 10 categories.32 The categories are shownin Figure 86.

32 The OSF DataLossDB includes a small number of incidents for which the breach type is listed as “Unknown.” These incidents are not included in the data and analysis presented in this report.

Accidental Web Accidental exposure on a Web site, available to the Web

Postal Mail Information exposed by physical mail, either sent to Snail Mail an incorrect recipient or with data visible outside the envelope

E-Mail E-mail sent to an unintended or unplanned recipient Email

Disposal Improper disposal of any sort Disposal Computer, Disposal

Document, Disposal Drive, Disposal Tape

Malware Malware was blamed Virus

Missing One or more laptop computers gone missing without Missing Laptop explanation

134 January through June 2009

Figure 87 illustrates the overall distribution of incidents by type since 2H07.

Figure 87. Security breach incidents, by incident type, 2H07–1H09

350

300

Missing 250 Virus E-mail 200Incidents

Postal Mail Lost 150 Accidental Web Fraud 100 Hack Disposal

50 Stolen

0 2H07 1H08 2H08 1H09

Trends that can be deduced from this data include the following:◆◆ Although security breaches are often linked in the popular consciousness with hack- ing incidents involving malicious parties defeating technical security measures to gain unlawful access to sensitive data, more than four-fifths of all breaches tracked in the DataLossDB result from something that the OSF database does not classify as a hack, including 87.7 percent of reported 1H09 breaches. Stolen equipment is the largest single category and accounts for twice as many incidents as intrusion, possibly because equipment theft is easily detected and reported. A number of the incident reports reviewed for this analysis mentioned that intrusions or accidental exposure of infor- mation on the Web had been going on for quite a while before they were detected.◆◆ Although still high, the percentage of breaches resulting from theft has declined signifi- cantly over the past two years. In absolute terms, theft incidents have fluctuated along with other breach types, ranging from 129 incidents in 1H08 to 68 incidents in 1H09. Organiza- tions may be taking more steps to secure sensitive equipment, such as security checks at facility gates or programs to educate employees about secure practices. Adoption of strong encryption solutions, like Windows BitLocker™ Drive Encryption, may also be contribut- ing to the decline. If encrypted data falls into malicious hands, it is much more difficult for the finder or retriever to extract than unencrypted data is, which is why disclosure laws typically do not require notification when encrypted data is stolen.

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◆◆ Improper disposal of business records accounts for quite a few incidents and is rela- tively easy for organizations to address by effectively developing and enforcing poli- cies regarding the destruction of paper and electronic records containing sensitive information. ◆◆ Overall, the data is relatively consistent over time, with no obvious anomalies or severe fluctuations. This could be taken to support the reliability of the data and can be used to influence information security decisions.

Social Security Numbers and Confidentiality

In the United States, many organizations use the nine-digit federal Social Security number (SSN) to authenticate customers, employees, users, and other people. As the number of jurisdictions adopting breach disclosure laws has increased, the body of information generated by databases such as the DataLossDB has highlighted the significant risks created by the use of SSNs for authentication. In 1H09, the DataLossDB held information about data confidentiality breaches affecting approximately 323 million SSNs, exceeding the total population of the United States. Some of these records are years or decades old, including a 1984 incident involving the credit-reporting bureau TRW (now Experian) in which 90 million records were put at risk. Even so, the magnitude of these breaches illustrates how authentication schemes that assume the confidentiality of SSNs are fundamentally problematic. In the context of records management, identification and authentication are two related, but distinctly different, concepts. Identification means using a unique label or value—the identifier—to distinguish a single record from all others. Authentication, by contrast, refers to a system for confirming the identity of a particular person or thing. When a user logs on to Windows, for example, their user name is used for identification and their password is used for authentication. Social Security numbers are guaranteed to be unique to each person, and most people commit their SSNs to memory with little trouble, two factors that lead organizations to use them as identifiers. (Nevertheless, other factors make SSNs a poor choice for identifiers: They are too short, they lack a check digit, and most people outside the United States don’t have one.) The universality and ease of use of SSNs have also

136 January through June 2009

prompted many organizations in the United States to use them for authentication purposes. Compared to passwords, however, SSNs are unsuitable for authentication for multiple reasons:oo Usage with multiple accounts: Users typically choose a new password every time they establish a new computer or Web site account, and every password can be unique, although users often choose the same password for multiple accounts. SSNs are used for authentication by countless service providers, and cannot be varied.oo Complexity rules: Passwords often must satisfy a minimum length requirement or contain capital letters, lowercase letters, numbers, or symbols in various combinations. SSNs always consist of exactly nine digits.oo Changeability: Users are usually allowed to change their passwords frequently and are sometimes required to do so. Most people have the same SSN for their entire lives.oo Ease of change: Computers and Web sites usually provide ways for users to easily change their passwords. People are only allowed to change their SSNs in certain rare cases.oo Secrecy: Computer users are reminded repeatedly to keep their passwords secret and to avoid sharing them with anyone. People routinely share their SSNs with a wide variety of service providers, and privacy breaches involving SSNs are common. It is not clear how many individual SSNs belonging to people who are alive today have been affected by incidents recorded in the DataLossDB. The figure cited earlier does not imply that 323 million unique, individual SSNs have been put at risk. It seems certain that some numbers have been disclosed repeatedly, and others have never been disclosed at all. There is likely a correlation with age (people who have had SSNs longer would have been asked to give them out more often, and older people are more likely to have had their SSNs used as their driver’s license numbers, a practice that fewer states are using today). There is likely a correlation with privacy sensitivity. Many people have been born since the 1984 TRW breach, and others have passed away. All of these factors make it difficult to estimate the magnitude of the problem to any reliable degree. It seems likely that over the next few years, as SSNs become easier for criminals to acquire, either through breach incidents or simply by guessing,33 the use of the SSN as an authenticator will be called harshly into question. Replacing it will not be easy and may not be quick.

33 See Alessandro Acquisti and Ralph Gross. “Predicting Social Security numbers from public data.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Vol. 106, No. 27 (July 7, 2009): 10975. http://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/ pnas.0904891106

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Guidance for Organizations: Protecting Against a Data Breach

In order to limit exposure to the risk of a data breach, Microsoft recommends that compa- nies choose and implement data security and privacy policies in the context of a compre- hensive data governance strategy, as part of their overall governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) efforts. This strategy should comprise policies, procedures, and standards to enable effective use of the organization’s structured and unstructured data, in several ways: ◆◆ By improving business decision-making due to increased data accuracy

◆◆ By reducing data redundancy and related maintenance costs

◆◆ By ensuring compliance with laws and regulations

◆◆ By reducing exposure of the company’s data to loss or theft

A key component of any data governance program is a technology framework that can help organizations protect and manage personal information, mitigate risk, achieve compliance, and promote trust and accountability. Key elements of this framework include the following: ◆◆ Secure infrastructure: Products and technologies that provide services such as application level anti-malware checks, and automatic patching of clients and servers which limit the attack surface in core IT infrastructure elements such as the operating system. ◆◆ Identity and access control: Authentication and authorization technologies that help prevent unauthorized access to information while seamlessly facilitating its availability to legitimate users. ◆◆ Information protection: Including data encryption, file classification, rights manage- ment, and data leak prevention technologies that help safeguard information against data breaches resulting from loss or theft. ◆◆ Auditing and reporting: Products and technologies that can be used to verify that systems and controls are operating effectively and to identify suspicious or noncompli- ant activity. In addition to the above described measures, organizations should have a breach noti- fication response plan in place and tested before needing it. Large organizations that do business in many different locales often have to conform to a complicated mixture of breach notification laws. Rather than trying to enact specific notification practices in every locale, organizations may find it simpler to uniformly adhere to the most stringent appli- cable requirements wherever possible. To assist customers in their data governance, risk management, and compliance efforts, Microsoft has developed a number of technology-based tools and guidance documents that can be downloaded at no cost from http://www.microsoft.com/datagovernance. Microsoft will continue to add resources in the future, such as a guide to the creation of a data governance program that is scheduled for publication in early 2010.

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Strategies, Mitigations, and Countermeasures

◆◆ Install Internet Explorer 8 to take advantage of a number of features that can help you reduce browser-based risk, including:34 ◆◆ SmartScreen Filter: Helps protect against phishing Web sites, other deceptive sites, and sites known to distribute malware. The filter provides another layer of security and makes it less likely something will compromise the network or systems on the network—reducing the likelihood IT will have to take drastic action. It makes it hard for users to miss the indicator that a site is dangerous and allows the IT department, through Group Policy, to restrict access if a site is determined to be unsafe. The malware-blocking feature saves IT personnel time by reducing the amount of time they have to spend disinfecting desktop systems. ◆◆ Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) Filter: Provides visibility into all requests and responses flowing through the browser. When the filter discovers likely XSS in a request, it identifies and neutralizes the attack if it is replayed in the server‘s response. The XSS filter is able to better protect users from Web site vulnerabilities without asking questions they are unable to answer or harming functionality on the Web site. ◆◆ Safer ActiveX Control & Management: Allows for greater management of ActiveX controls, such as where and how they can load, specify which sites can use the control, as well as which users can load them. Internet Explorer 8 also allows the administrator to help set up the ActiveX control installation process for future ActiveX controls.◆◆ Avoid browsing to sites that you do not trust. The use of Extended Validation (EV) certificates and the Domain Name Highlighting features in Internet Explorer 8 will assist users in making the proper choices, but awareness that these sites exist are key in protecting your users.◆◆ Have your internal developer teams use the SiteLock Template for ActiveX Controls technology, available from the Microsoft Download Center, for custom controls that are designed for use only on your internal Web sites. Locking a control to a particular domain makes it harder for other sites to repurpose the control in a malicious manner.◆◆ Determine what security controls your search engine provider has implemented to help reduce the threat posed to your users by drive-by download attacks.◆◆ Use the AppLocker feature in Windows 7, which uses digitally signed code from the vendor to prevent programs from installing or executing on managed desktops.◆◆ Enable the revised User Account Control in Windows 7 to ensure that any malware that makes it through the defenses is not capable of elevating its privilege to run as anything higher than a normal user. If an attack requires administrator access, it will not run unless an administrator specifically allows it.34 For a more in-depth look at these security features, see “Windows Internet Explorer 8 Technology Overview for Enterprise and IT Pros,” a white paper available from the Microsoft Download Center.

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◆◆ Enable Data Execution Prevention (DEP) and Structured Exception Handling Over- write Protection (SEHOP) in compatible versions of Windows, which can help prevent a class of exploits known as buffer overflows. You can enable DEP and/or SEHOP using the EMET Enhanced Mitigation Evaluation Tool (EMET; http://go.microsoft.com/ fwlink/?LinkId=162309). You can enable DEP for Office applications using the FixIt4Me tool (http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9668625). ◆◆ Encrypt data on all computers and storage devices, including thumb drives. Full vol- ume encryption solutions should be consistent with high encryption algorithms such as AES. You should also ensure that the proper Domain Recovery Agents (DRA) are in place prior to the implementation of a domain policy, in order to ensure that data can be recovered in the event of a lost or damaged encryption key. ◆◆ Use the Microsoft Security Assessment Tool (MSAT; http://technet.microsoft.com/ en-us/security/cc185712.aspx) to help identify risks in your IT security environment and build a plan to successfully manage the risk. ◆◆ Be aware of the details of breach notification laws in all regions in which you conduct business. Work closely with your general counsel to follow the proper procedure in the event of a security breach. National and local laws vary considerably. ◆◆ Develop and implement plans to reduce the likelihood of common types of breaches, to mitigate their impact should they occur, and to respond if the mitigations are not fully effective. ◆◆ Do not rely on Social Security numbers for authentication purposes. If your orga- nization uses Social Security numbers for account identification, consider whether a different identification scheme would be more appropriate. ◆◆ Understand and prioritize critical assets with the business owners to ensure proper coverage of the correct assets. This includes the identification and classification of data into risk categories (i.e., High Business Impact, Medium Business Impact, Low Business Impact). It is imperative that the business owners are an integral part of this process, as they can provide insight into their business and competitive advantage that IT typically cannot. In addition, the determination of what constitutes an “acceptable level of loss” needs to be understood and communicated. ◆◆ Coordinate your IT security plan with your security plan to help control access to data centers or other high risk areas. ◆◆ Ensure that an incident response plan is in place and that exercises are conducted regularly, so that the staff is able to react quickly and without confusion in a crisis. Per- form small-scale drills (like conference room role-playing scenarios) more frequently, and use them to identify areas for future emphasis.

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The Microsoft Security Response Center investigates and responds to reports of vulnerabilitiesin Microsoft products. MSRC staffers constantly monitor a number of communication channels,including Internet-based security forums and e-mail sent to secure@microsoft.com by indepen-dent security researchers, for information that may indicate the existence of a new vulnerabilityor exploit. When MSRC researchers verify that a vulnerability exists, they work with the affectedproduct team to develop, test, and deliver a security update in response to the vulnerability. Securityupdates are made available for download through several different mechanisms, including WindowsUpdate, Microsoft Update, and the Microsoft Download Center.

The MSRC publishes Microsoft Security Bulletins and Security Advisories to communicate vul-nerability and exploit information to the public. Microsoft Security Bulletins provide informationand guidance about updates that are available to address software vulnerabilities that may existin Microsoft products. With each security bulletin that is released, there is an associated softwareupdate available for the affected product. Microsoft Security Advisories are meant to give customersdetailed information and guidance on a variety of security-related issues that may not be specificallytied to a software update. For example, an advisory may detail Microsoft software updates that intro-duce changes to the behavior of the product or may provide late-breaking and timely informationthat customers can use to help protect themselves from threats or attack. The MSRC also engageswith other software vendors to help them identify and resolve vulnerabilities in their software.

The MSRC blog, at http://blogs.technet.com/msrc, provides additional information about vulner-

Industry-Wide Vulnerability Disclosures

V ulnerabilities are weaknesses in software that allow an attacker to compromise the integrity, availability, or confidentiality of that software. Some of the worst vulnerabilities allow attackers to run arbitrary code on the compromised system. This section of the Microsoft Security Intelligence Report analyzes new vulnerabilities that were disclosed during the first half of 2009 and examines trends in vulnerability disclosures since 2004. A disclosure, as the term is used in this report, is the revelation of a software vulnerability to the public at large. It does not refer to any sort of private disclosure or disclosure to a limited number of people. Disclosures can come from a variety of sources, including the software vendor itself, security software vendors, independent security researchers, and even malware creators. This section discusses software vulnerability disclosures for the software industry as a whole. See “Vulnerability Reports for Microsoft Products,” beginning on page 150, for Microsoft-specific vulnerability information.

Vulnerability Disclosures In 1H09, disclosed vulnerabilities across the software industry declined 28.4 percent from the previous half-year period, reversing a trend of small period-to-period increases observed since 2H07. Figure 88 illustrates the number of vulnerability disclosures across the software industry for each half-year period since 1H04. Figure 88. Industry-wide vulnerability disclosures by half-year, 1H04–1H09

3,500

3,000

2,500

2,000

1,500

1,000

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Vulnerability Disclosure Date vs. Publication Date

In this section and in “Vulnerability Reports for Microsoft Products,” beginning on page150, vulnerabilities are counted and charted for trends based upon the date when thevulnerability was first disclosed.Another key date associated with each vulnerability is its publication date, which isthe date the vulnerability is first assigned a Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures(CVE) identifier and published in the Mitre CVE list (http://cve.mitre.org) or the NISTNational Vulnerability Database (http://nvd.nist.gov). Usually, but not always, thelength of time between the publication and disclosure dates is relatively short andhas little impact on the trend analysis. For example, from 2005 through the end of2007, less than 5 percent of the vulnerabilities disclosed in each half-year period werepublished more than 30 days beyond the end of the period.For both 1H08 and 2H08, however, a significant percentage of vulnerabilities disclosedduring those periods were not published until 2009—enough to have a noticeableeffect on the reported disclosure trend, as shown in Figure 89.

The blue portion of each bar represents the vulnerability disclosures for each half-yearperiod that had been published as of December 31, 2008. Red represents vulnerabilitydisclosures for each period that have been published since January 1, 2009. Theserevisions show that what had previously appeared to be a slight downward trend from2H07 to 2H08 was, in fact, a slight upward trend over the same time.The chart also shows that the count of vulnerability disclosures for earlier periods hasbeen stable since the beginning of 2009, which raises confidence in the observedtrends for those periods.

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Vulnerability Severity In general, large numbers of disclosed vulnerabilities create significant challenges for IT security administrators who have deployed the affected products. Not all vulnerabilities are equal, however, and an analysis of vulnerability severity can help IT professionals under- stand and prioritize the nature and severity of the threats they face from newly disclosed vulnerabilities. (See “Exploitability Index,” on page 155, for information about another metric that can aid in prioritization.) The Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) is a standardized, platform-independent scoring system for rating IT vulnerabilities, developed by a coalition of security professionals from around the world representing the commercial, non-commercial, and academic sec- tors. Currently in its second version, the system assigns a numeric value between 0 and 10 to vulnerabilities according to severity, with higher scores representing greater severity.35 As Figure 90 illustrates, the drop in total vulnerabilities seen in 1H09 was accompanied by a drop in the percentage of all vulnerabilities rated High severity and a slight increase in the percentage of vulnerabilities rated Low severity. High severity vulnerabilities accounted for 46.0 percent of all vulnerabilities, down from 52.8 percent in 2H08. Low severity vulnerabilities accounted for 4.1 percent of all vulnerabilities, up from 3.2 percent in 2H08. The continuing predominance of High and Medium severity vulnerability disclosures is likely due at least in part to the tendency of both attackers and legitimate security researchers to prioritize searching for the most severe vulnerabilities. Attackers seek out severe vulnerabilities so they can develop more effective attacks, while legitimate researchers focus on finding the vulnerabilities that could cause the most damage if exploited, so software vendors can address them quickly. Figure 90. Industry-wide vulnerability disclosures by severity, 1H04–1H09

100%

80%

60% High Severity Medium Severity 40% Low Severity

20%

0% 1H04 2H04 1H05 2H05 1H06 2H06 1H07 2H07 1H08 2H08 1H09

35 For an explanation of the CVSS scoring methodology, see http://www.first.org/cvss/cvss-guide.html#i3.

144 January through June 2009

Focusing on mitigating the most severe vulnerabilities first is a security best practice.While CVSS, through the National Vulnerability Database (NVD),36 provides a base scoreacross the set of industry vulnerabilities, security professionals should look first to theirsoftware vendors for further security information because they are the people whounderstand their software best. However, not all vendors provide their own assessment ofseverity or even provide security advisories for vulnerabilities.The large number of High severity vulnerabilities underscores the importance of look-ing beyond the simpler groupings of Low, Medium, and High to leverage the CVSS scorebehind the rating label, in addition to other information that is available. With Highseverity vulnerabilities accounting for about half of all vulnerabilities during each of thelast several periods, administrators need more information to effectively set priorities forresponding to vulnerabilities.Along these lines, the chart in Figure 91 illustrates the severity breakdown for 1H09. Itshows the percentage distributions of the severity ratings and includes a breakout for themost severe of the High severity vulnerabilities—those with a base CVSS score of 9.9 orhigher—which represent 6.7 percent of all vulnerabilities disclosed.Figure 91. Industry-wide vulnerability disclosures by severity, 1H09

Low (0 � 3.9) 4.1%

Highest (9.9 +) 6.7% Medium (4 � 6.9) 49.9%

High (7 � 9.8) 39.3%

36 The National Vulnerability Database (http://nvd.nist.gov) is the U.S. government repository of standards-based vulnerability management data represented using the Security Content Automation Protocol (SCAP). CVE and CVSS are both components of SCAP.

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Vulnerability Complexity Some vulnerabilities are easier to exploit than others, and vulnerability complexity is an important factor to consider in determining the magnitude of the threat a vulnerability poses. A High severity vulnerability that can only be exploited under very specific and rare circumstances might require less immediate attention than a lower severity vulnerability that can be exploited more easily. Security investigators take both severity and complexity into account when determining the appropriate response to a vulnerability. Access complexity is one of the metrics used to calculate the CVSS base score for a vul- nerability. CVSS version 2.0 uses three complexity designations: Low, Medium, and High. Figure 92 gives definitions for these designations.37 Figure 92. NVD complexity rankings and definitions

High Specialized access conditions exist. For example:

• In most configurations, the attacking party must already have elevated privileges or spoof additional systems in addition to the attacking system (for example, DNS hijacking). • The attack depends on social engineering methods that would be easily detected by knowl- edgeable people. For example, the victim must perform several suspicious or atypical actions. • The vulnerable configuration is seen very rarely in practice. • If a race condition exists, the window is very narrow.

Medium The access conditions are somewhat specialized. The following are examples: • The attacking party is limited to a group of systems or users at some level of authorization, possibly untrusted. • Some information must be gathered before a successful attack can be launched. • The affected configuration is non-default and is not commonly configured (for example, a vulnerability present when a server performs user account authentication via a specific scheme but not present for another authentication scheme). • The attack requires a small amount of social engineering that might occasionally fool cautious users (for example, phishing attacks that modify a Web browser’s status bar to show a false link, having to be on someone’s “buddy” list before sending an IM exploit).

Low Specialized access conditions or extenuating circumstances do not exist. The following are examples: • The affected product typically requires access to a wide range of systems and users, possibly anonymous and untrusted (for example, Internet-facing Web or mail server). • The affected configuration is default or ubiquitous. • The attack can be performed manually and requires little skill or additional information gathering. • The “race condition” is a lazy one (in other words, it is technically a race but easily winnable).

37 Definition from Peter Mell, Karen Scarfone, and Sasha Romanosky. A Complete Guide to the Common Vulnerability Scoring System Version 2.0, section 2.1.2. http://www.first.org/cvss/cvss-guide.html

As with severity, the complexity trend in 1H09 is a generally positive one: 54.2 percent ofall vulnerabilities were Low complexity in 1H09, down from 57.7 percent in 2H08, anddown almost 30 percentage points over the last five years. With more than half of all vul-nerabilities designated Low complexity, however, it is clear that vulnerability complexityremains a significant problem. Among High severity vulnerabilities, in fact, 69.7 percentwere also designated Low complexity—down from 79.1 percent in 2H08, but still veryhigh. As with High severity vulnerabilities, both attackers and legitimate security research-ers tend to prioritize searching for Low complexity vulnerabilities, for reasons similar tothose given earlier.

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Figure 94. High severity vulnerabilities, by access complexity, in 1H09

High Complexity (1.1%)

Medium Low Complexity (69.7%)

Complexity (29.1%)

Operating System and Browser Vulnerabilities

Comparing operating system vulnerabilities to non-operating system vulnerabilities requires determining whether a particular program or component should be considered part of an operating system. This is not always a simple and straightforward question to answer, given the componentized nature of modern operating systems. Some programs (media players, for example) ship by default with operating system software but can also be downloaded from the system software vendor’s Web site and installed individually. Linux distributions, in particular, are often assembled from components developed by different teams, many of which provide crucial operating functions, like a graphical user interface (GUI) or Internet browsing. To facilitate analysis of operating system and browser vulnerabilities, this section distin- guishes between three different kinds of vulnerabilities: ◆◆ Operating system vulnerabilities are those affecting the Linux kernel; or components that ship with an operating system produced by Microsoft, Apple, or a proprietary Unix vendor, and defined as part of the operating system by the vendor, except as described in the next paragraph.

148 January through June 2009

◆◆ Browser vulnerabilities are those affecting components defined as part of a Web browser. This includes Web browsers that ship with operating systems, such as Microsoft Windows Internet Explorer and Apple’s Safari, along with third-party browsers, such as Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome.◆◆ Application vulnerabilities are those affecting all other components, including com- ponents published by operating system vendors and other vendors. Vulnerabilities in open source components that may ship with Linux distributions (such as the X Window System, the GNOME desktop environment, GIMP, and others) are considered applica- tion vulnerabilities.Figure 95 shows vulnerabilities for operating systems, browsers, and other componentssince 1H04, as determined by this simple model.Figure 95. Industry-wide operating system, browser, and other vulnerabilities, 1H04–1H09

3,500

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2,000 Browser Vulnerabilities

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Vulnerabilities

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While application vulnerabilities are down sharply from 2H08, operating system vul-nerabilities are roughly consistent with the previous period, and browser vulnerabilitiesactually increased slightly.

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Vulnerability Reports for Microsoft Products

F igure 96 charts vulnerability disclosures for Microsoft products since 1H04. In general, trends for Microsoft vulnerability disclosures have mirrored those for the industry as a whole, though on a much smaller scale.

Vulnerability disclosures for Microsoft products decreased from 143 unique vulnerabilities in 2H08 to 115 in 1H09, consistent with the decline in the industry as a whole. Figure 97 provides some perspective for these figures by illustrating the relative share of vulnerability disclosures for Microsoft and non-Microsoft software since 1H04. Figure 97. Vulnerability disclosures for Microsoft and non-Microsoft products, 1H04–1H09

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150 January through June 2009

The size and scale of Figure 97 make it difficult to identify trends, so Figure 98 showsMicrosoft disclosures as a percentage of total disclosures over the same period. Despitedecreasing in absolute terms since 2H08, Microsoft vulnerability disclosures rose slightly asa percentage of all vulnerability disclosures in 1H09 due to the steeper drop in industry-widedisclosures shown in Figure 97. Over the past five years, Microsoft vulnerability disclo-sures have consistently accounted for about 3 to 6 percent of all disclosures industry wide.Figure 98. Microsoft vulnerability disclosures as a percentage of all industry disclosures, 1H04–1H09

6%

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1%

0% 1H04 2H04 1H05 2H05 1H06 2H06 1H07 2H07 1H08 2H08 1H09

Responsible DisclosuresResponsible disclosure means disclosing vulnerabilities privately to an affected vendor so itcan develop a comprehensive security update to address the vulnerability before the detailsbecome public knowledge. Ideally, with responsible disclosure, the release of the securityupdate coincides with vulnerability information becoming publicly available. This helps tokeep users safer by preventing potential attackers from learning about newly discoveredvulnerabilities before security updates are available.

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Figure 99 shows responsible disclosures of vulnerabilities in Microsoft software received by

the Microsoft Security Response Center in each half-year period since 1H05, as a percent- age of all disclosures. Figure 99. Responsible disclosures as a percentage of all disclosures involving Microsoft software, 1H05–1H09

closure practices, up from 70.6 percent in 2H08 and higher than in any previous tracked period. Responsible disclosure figures include disclosures brought to the MSRC by vulner- ability brokers iDefense and ZDI. A vulnerability broker is a company or other entity that provides software vendors, such as Microsoft, with vulnerability information provided to it by external security researchers. In exchange for such compensation as the broker may provide, the security researchers agree not to disclose any information about the vulnera- bility to anyone other than the vulnerability broker and the affected vendor. Microsoft and the MSRC continue to work with vulnerability brokers as a means of providing an avenue for researchers to responsibly disclose security issues to vendors, as an alternative to full public disclosures that place customers and the overall computing ecosystem at risk. Notably, the percentage of disclosures submitted by vulnerability brokers remained stable in 1H09, at 10.5 percent of all disclosures (up from 9.9 percent in 2H08), while the per- centage of responsible disclosures submitted through other means rose significantly, from 60.7 percent in 2H08 to 69.1 percent in 1H09. Microsoft believes that software vendors can achieve high responsible disclosure rates by engaging with the security community directly and by proactively addressing security issues in a timely manner, while working with the security researcher on the reported vulnerability. The historically high responsible disclo- sure rate seen in 1H09 may be taken as a validation of Microsoft’s commitment to address security issues through a variety of approaches.

152 January through June 2009

Microsoft Security Bulletins in 1H09

The MSRC is the group at Microsoft that identifies, monitors, resolves, and responds toMicrosoft software security vulnerabilities. The MSRC releases security bulletins each monththat fix vulnerabilities in Microsoft software. Security bulletins are numbered serially withineach calendar year. For example, “MS09-012” refers to the twelfth security bulletin releasedin 2009. Security bulletins are typically released on the second Tuesday of each month,although on rare occasions Microsoft releases a so-called out-of-band security update toaddress an urgent issue. Microsoft did not release any out-of-band updates in 1H09.Figure 100. Total security bulletins and out-of-band updates released by Microsoft since 1H05

A single security bulletin often addresses multiple vulnerabilities from the CVE database,38each of which is listed in the bulletin, along with any other relevant issues. Figure 101shows the number of security bulletins released and the number of individual CVE-identified vulnerabilities they have addressed for each half-year period since 1H05. (Notethat not all vulnerabilities are addressed in the period in which they are initially disclosed.)

38 See the National Vulnerability Database (NVD), at http://nvd.nist.gov, to look up vulnerabilities by CVE identifier.

In 1H09 the MSRC released 27 security bulletins, which addressed 87 individual CVE- identified vulnerabilities, a 12.4-percent decrease over the number of vulnerabilities addressed in 2H08. As Figure 102 shows, the average number of CVEs addressed by each security bulletin has risen over time, from 1.5 in 1H05 to 3.2 in 1H09. Figure 102. Average number of CVEs addressed per security bulletin, 1H05–1H09 3.5

3.0

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0.0 1H05 2H05 1H06 2H06 1H07 2H07 1H08 2H08 1H09

Whenever possible, the MSRC consolidates multiple vulnerabilities affecting a single binary or component and addresses them with a single security bulletin, to maximize the effec- tiveness of each update while minimizing the potential disruption that customers face from testing and integrating individual security updates into their computing environments.

154 January through June 2009

More Vendors Adopting Scheduled Release Strategies

Since 2003, Microsoft has released most security updates in groups on the second Tuesday of each month, in order to make it easier for customers to test and deploy new updates and build processes for faster deployment. As attackers increasingly turn to vulnerable browser add-ons as targets for exploitation (as described in “Top Browser-Based Exploits,” beginning on page 113), other software vendors have begun to adopt scheduled update release strategies of their own. On May 20, 2009, Adobe Systems announced that the company was moving to a quarterly cycle for releasing security updates for its popular Adobe Reader and Acrobat programs. In a post on the Adobe Secure Software Engineering Team (ASSET) blog,39 Brad Arkin, Director of Product Security and Privacy at Adobe, wrote that the company was adopting the scheduled approach as part of a larger initiative aimed at making Adobe Reader and Acrobat more secure and enhancing Adobe’s ability to respond to externally discovered vulnerabilities. These quarterly release dates would be scheduled to occur on Tuesdays, to align with Microsoft’s own release schedule. Adobe’s quarterly release cycle formally began on June 9, 2009 with the release of security bulletin APSB09-07, 40 which addressed 13 vulnerabilities in Adobe Reader and Acrobat versions for the Windows and Macintosh platforms.

Exploitability IndexIn August 2008, the Microsoft Security Response Center introduced the ExploitabilityIndex as a means to assist customers in evaluating the actual risk and likelihood of exploi-tation for security issues identified and addressed by Microsoft security updates.41The Exploitability Index assesses the likelihood that code will be released that exploits thevulnerability or vulnerabilities addressed in a security bulletin within the first 30 days afterthat bulletin’s release. The main purpose of the Exploitability Index is to assist customersin prioritizing the deployment of security updates. Exploitability Index ratings enablecustomers to more effectively evaluate security bulletins with similar Severity ratings butdifferent relative amounts of risk. 1H09 is the first full period that the Exploitability Indexhas been in operation and available to customers.

Figure 103 explains the ratings assigned for an issue’s Exploitability Index and what they mean. Figure 103. Exploitability Index ratings

Exploit Index Rating Description

1 – Consistent Exploit Exploit code could be created in such a way that an attacker could consistently Code Likely exploit the vulnerability. For example, an exploit would be able to cause remote code execution of that attacker's code repeatedly and do so in a way that an attacker could consistently expect the same results. This would make it an attractive target for attackers and therefore more likely that exploit code would be created. As such, customers who have reviewed the security bulletin and determined its applicability within their environment could treat this with a higher priority.

2 – Inconsistent Exploit Exploit code could be created, but an attacker would likely experience inconsistent Code Likely results, even when targeting the affected product. For example, an exploit would be able to cause remote code execution but may only work 1 out of 10 times, or 1 out of 100 times, depending on the state of the system being targeted and the quality of the exploit code. While an attacker may be able to increase the consistency of their results by having better understanding and control of the target environment, the unreliable nature of this attack makes it a less attractive target for attackers. Therefore, it is likely that exploit code will be created, but it is unlikely that attacks will be as effective as other, more consistently exploitable, vulnerabilities. As such, customers who have reviewed the security bulletin and determined its applicability within their environment should treat this as a material update, but if prioritizing against other highly exploitable vulnerabilities, could rank this lower in their deploy- ment priority.

3 – Functioning Exploit Exploit code that functions successfully is unlikely to be released. This means that it Code Unlikely might be possible for exploit code to be released that could trigger the vulnerability and cause abnormal behavior, but it is unlikely that an attacker would be able to create an exploit that could successfully exercise the full impact of the vulnerability. Given that vulnerabilities of this type would require significant investment by attackers to be useful, the risk of exploit code being created and used is much lower. There- fore, customers who have reviewed the security bulletin to determine its applicability within their environment could prioritize this update below other vulnerabilities within a release.

that they were considered the most likely to be exploited within 30 days of the associatedsecurity bulletin’s release. Of these, 11 were, in fact, exploited within 30 days. Of the 46vulnerabilities that received Exploitability Index ratings of 2 or 3, indicating that exploita-tion would be unreliable or unlikely, none were identified to have been publicly exploitedwithin 30 days.

1H09 Bulletin Severity and Exploitability Index Accuracy

While no system that attempts to predict future vulnerability exploitation is ever likelyto be consistently 100 percent accurate, false negatives (vulnerabilities that receive lowerExploitability Index (XI) ratings but which are then exploited within 30 days) are gener-ally much more consequential than false positives (vulnerabilities that receive the highestExploitability Index rating but are not exploited within 30 days). For system administra-tors who prioritize security bulletins by Exploitability Index rating, false negatives meanelevated risk from potential exposure to exploitation, whereas false positives do not.Figure 105 shows how the Exploitability Index ratings for security bulletins released in1H09 correlated with bulletin severity.42Figure 105. Security bulletin severity and exploitability, 1H09

Bulletin Severity Status XI Rating 1 XI Rating 2 XI Rating 3

In 1H09, two bulletins received a severity rating of Moderate. Of these, none were assignedan Exploitability Index rating of 1, and none were identified to have been publicly exploitedwithin 30 days.Nine bulletins received a severity rating of Important. Of these, four were assigned anExploitability Index rating of 1, indicating that functional reliable exploit code was likelyin the first 30 days after the bulletin’s release. Three of these four addressed vulnerabilities thatwere publicly exploited within 30 days, for an aggregate false positive rate of 25 percent.

42 For more information on the security bulletin severity rating system, visit http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/rating.mspx.

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Sixteen bulletins received a severity rating of Critical. Of these, 11 were assigned an

Exploitability Index rating of 1. Five of these 11 bulletins addressed vulnerabilities that were publicly exploited within 30 days, for an aggregate false positive rate of 55 percent. The higher false positive rate for Critical security bulletins can be attributed to the conser- vative approach used during the assessment process to ensure the highest degree of cus- tomer protection for the most severe class of issues. This approach is validated somewhat by the fact that none of the vulnerabilities assigned a lower Exploitability Index rating were exploited publicly within 30 days, as noted earlier. Customers with limited resources and the need to prioritize security bulletin deploy- ments can use Exploitability Index ratings in conjunction with the existing severity rating system to determine the appropriate deployment strategy for their environment. Figure 106, showing severity and Exploitability Index ratings for security bulletins released in June 2009, illustrates how the Exploitability Index can be used to lower risk. A customer that only addresses Critical updates during the first month of release would have remained exposed to exploit code for the vulnerability addressed by security bulletin MS09-020, classified as an Important update. By contrast, a customer that addresses all security bul- letins with an Exploitability Index rating of 1 during the first month of release would have been protected from the MS09-020 exploit code. Figure 106. June 2009 security bulletin release severity and Exploitability Index breakdown

While the MSRC continues to improve its mechanisms for assessing exploitability, and future periods will provide additional information about the accuracy of the Exploitability Index, the data for 1H09 can be taken to support the use of the index as a method for pri- oritizing security update deployments beyond that which is possible from severity ratings alone, without introducing additional risk.

158 January through June 2009

Mitigations, Workarounds, and Attack Surface Reduction

In addition to creating comprehensive security updates that address vulnerabilities, theMSRC attempts to identify applicable mitigations and workarounds that customers can useto reduce their potential risk from a vulnerability before they are able to deploy the associ-ated security update.A mitigation, or mitigating factor, is a default setting, common configuration, or generalbest practice that could reduce the severity of exploitation of a vulnerability, withouttypically requiring additional action. For example, for a vulnerability that can only beexploited if an obscure TCP port is open to the Internet, following commonly acceptedbest practices for enterprise firewalls would be a mitigating factor, because such ports aretypically firewalled by default. While a mitigation does not eliminate or address a vul-nerability, it does introduce barriers to successful exploitation. The more mitigations acustomer is able to take advantage of, the more obstacles an attacker would have to over-come to successfully use the vulnerability in an attack.A workaround refers to a setting or configuration change that can be implemented to blockknown attack vectors before the associated security update can be applied. (The same factor orsetting can be a mitigating factor for one customer and require a workaround for another.For example, if the TCP port mentioned in the previous paragraph is open, closing it wouldbe a workaround.) Workarounds may not be feasible for everyone. They should be con-sidered and evaluated against functionalities and operational considerations that may beidentified as not relevant or needed in a particular computing environment.43In addition to presenting customers with additional information that can be used to assessrisk and prioritize update deployment, mitigations and workarounds also allow customersto explore interim alternatives to deploying security updates or to provide additional pro-tection while the update and deployment process is underway. The more mitigations andworkarounds customers have at their disposal, the more options and information they cantake advantage of to mitigate that overall risk.

43 For information and best practices regarding Microsoft security updates, see the Microsoft Security Update Guide, available from the Microsoft Download Center.

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As Figure 107 illustrates, nearly half of the security bulletins released by Microsoft in 1H09 included one or more workarounds for each vulnerability addressed by the bulletin. Figure 107. Workaround and mitigation status for 1H09 security bulletins No Workarounds or Mitigations (3.7%) Workarounds Available For All Vulnerabilities (48.1%) No Workarounds; Some Mitigations (25.9%)

Workarounds Available For Some Vulnerabilities (22.2%)

“Appendix D: Microsoft Security Bulletins in 1H09,” on page 227, includes more informa- tion about mitigations and workarounds for each security bulletin released in 1H09.

160 January through June 2009

Usage Trends for Windows Update

and Microsoft Update

T he prompt, widespread adoption of security updates and other software upgrades can significantly mitigate the spread and impact of malware. Over the past decade, many software vendors have developed mechanisms for informing users about the availability of new updates and enabling them to obtain and installupdates easily and automatically. Security-conscious IT departments have responded bydeveloping practices to quickly test and assess newly issued updates and to deliver them totheir users.

Update Clients and Services

Microsoft provides several tools and services that enable users to download and installupdates directly from Microsoft or from update servers designated by their systemadministrators. The update client software (called Automatic Updates in Windows XP andWindows Server 2003, and simply Windows Update in Windows Vista and Windows Server2008) connects to an update service for the list of available updates. After the update clienthas determined which updates are applicable to the user’s computer, it installs the updatesor notifies the user that they are available, depending on the way the client is configuredand the nature of each update.For end users, Microsoft provides two update services that the update clients can use.◆◆ Windows Update provides updates for Windows components and for device drivers provided by Microsoft and other hardware vendors. Windows Update also distributes signature updates for Microsoft anti-malware products and the monthly release of the MSRT. To help secure users against exploitation, Microsoft also uses Windows Update to distribute kill bits that prevent certain vulnerable add-ons from running in Internet Explorer.44 By default, when the user enables automatic updating, the update client connects to the Windows Update service for updates.◆◆ Microsoft Update provides all of the updates offered through Windows Update and provides updates for other Microsoft software, such as the Microsoft Office system, Microsoft SQL Server, and Microsoft Exchange Server. Users can opt in to the ser- vice when installing software serviced through Microsoft Update or at the Microsoft Update Web site.

44 See http://support.microsoft.com/kb/240797 for more information about kill bits. While Microsoft does not currently provide third-party non-driver software updates directly through its update services, the Microsoft Vulnerability Research (MSVR) program does notify vendors of potential vulnerabilities in their respective products and assists in the determination of next steps and servicing.

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As Figure 108 shows, Microsoft Update adoption has risen significantly over the past several years, with increasing numbers of Windows Update users choosing to switch to the more comprehensive service. Figure 108. Usage of Windows Update and Microsoft Update, 2H06–1H09, indexed to 2H06 total usage

Enterprise customers can use Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) or the Microsoft System Center family of management products to provide update services for their man- aged computers. As Figure 109 shows, end-user update service usage and the number of WSUS servers managing updates have both grown faster than the Windows installed base since 2H06, indicating that users are choosing to enable updating on existing Windows installations and on new ones. Figure 109. Relative growth in Microsoft WSUS and end-user update services, 2H06–1H09, indexed to 2H06 1.8

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162 January through June 2009

The Role of Automatic Updating

EncyclopediaAutomatic updating is one of the most effective tools that users and organizations can use Win32/Msblast: A family of networkto protect themselves. It helps prevent the spread of malware, protects exposed computers, worms that exploit a vulnerabilityand prevents the spread of new malware designed by reverse engineering the released addressed by security bulletinupdate. For example, most of the exploits responsible for many of the well-known malware MS03-039. The worm may attempt DoS attacks on some serveroutbreaks discussed throughout this report, such as Win32/Msblast and Win32/Sasser, sites or create a backdoor on thewere discovered after security updates that fixed the associated vulnerability had already infected system.been made publicly available. Users and organizations that regularly use automatic updat- Win32/Sasser: A family of networking to apply defensive measures like security updates and antivirus signatures not only worms that exploit a vulnerability fixed by security bulletin MS04-reduce their own risk from attack but also help keep infections from spreading further. 011. The worm spreads by randomly scanning IP addressesThe significant and immediate effect that automatic updating can have on stopping the for vulnerable machines andspread of malware is illustrated by an incident from February 2007, when the trojan down- infecting any that are found.loader family Win32/Renos began infecting computers around the world. In some cases, Win32/Renos: A family of trojanif a computer running Windows Vista is infected with Renos, the malware causes Windows downloaders that install rogue security software.Explorer to crash repeatedly, generating error reports that are sent to Microsoft if Windows http://www.microsoft.com/avError Reporting is enabled on the computer. Within days, Microsoft was receiving almost1.2 million error reports a day from computers infected with Renos. On February 27,Microsoft released a signature update for Windows Defender (which is installed by defaulton Windows Vista) through Windows Update and Microsoft Update that included detec-tions for Renos. Within three days, enough computers had received the new signatureupdate to drop the error reports from 1.2 million per day to less than 100,000 per dayworldwide. A few weeks later, the number of error reports caused by Renos had dwindledto insignificant levels.Figure 110. Daily Windows error reports caused by Win32/Renos on Windows Vista in February and March 2007

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Regional Variations in Update Service Usage

Use of the Microsoft online update services varies worldwide due to a number of factors, including broadband Internet connectivity, software piracy, and the percentage of comput- ers managed in enterprise environments, which are often updated through mechanisms like WSUS and System Center rather than Windows Update and Microsoft Update. Figure 111 shows update service usage and software piracy rates for several locations around the world, with the United States as a baseline and the rates for other locations displayed relative to the United States. Figure 111. Update service usage and software piracy rates for seven locations worldwide, relative to the United States

Myths and Facts About Microsoft Update Services and Software PiracyMicrosoft customer research indicates that there are four primary myths that discouragepeople from using online update services in regions with high piracy rates, as detailed inFigure 112.Figure 112. Myths about Microsoft update services and software piracy

Myth Fact

Anti-piracy updates are forcibly Users can, through the Windows Update or Automatic Updates control installed by Microsoft if users install panels, choose how updates are downloaded and installed. Users can updates through Windows Update choose the updates they want installed. and Automatic Updates. Use of the Windows Update and Microsoft Update Web sites (Windows XP and Windows Server 2003) is gated to require Genuine validation, but there is no restriction on the use of Automatic Updates on the local computer.

Microsoft does not offer security Microsoft offers all security updates for Windows and all other Micro- updates to pirated systems. soft products. They also allow all computers to install the latest service packs, update rollups, critical reliability updates, compatibility updates, and most software upgrades.

Microsoft update services scan Microsoft’s update services do not collect and forward personally computers for pirated software identifiable information back to Microsoft for use in criminal prosecu- and relay personally identifiable tions. To help mitigate privacy concerns, Microsoft has obtained and information (PII) back to Microsoft continues to renew third-party privacy certification for each version of for use in criminal prosecutions. the Windows update client. For more information about how privacy is protected through Windows Update, refer to the Windows Update privacy statement. For more information on how privacy is protected through genuine software updates, refer to the Microsoft Genuine Advantage Privacy Statement.

Microsoft update services will cause The functionality, reliability, or performance of non-genuine Windows- non-genuine computers to crash based computers is not degraded. The following things will occur for a more often or experience perfor- non-genuine computer: mance problems. Functionality of • The desktop background will be changed to the color black. Windows is reduced on non-genuine • The user will be periodically notified that the computer is non-genuine. computers. • The user may not be offered new software or less-critical (value added) updates that are offered to Genuine Windows-based computers.

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Strategies, Mitigations, and Countermeasures

◆◆ Configure Windows Update or Microsoft Update on all computers. It is important to check the configured update service periodically to ensure updates are being installed correctly. This is especially critical after a major malware outbreak or after installing a new operating system on the computer. A majority of the exploits cited in this report could have been prevented had the updates been installed in a timely manner through Windows Update or Microsoft Update. ◆◆ Understand the Microsoft Security Update process and terminology. The newly released Microsoft Security Update Guide, available from the Microsoft Download Center, will help you understand the security update release process and all of Microsoft’s supporting resources. It also explains the Microsoft security communication process and provides guidance on how to successfully plan and manage your update manage- ment program, including when and how to implement temporary workarounds. ◆◆ If you are a security software vendor, participate in the Microsoft Active Protections Program (MAPP; http://www.microsoft.com/security/msrc/collaboration/mapp.aspx). Members of MAPP receive security vulnerability information from the Microsoft Security Response Center in advance of Microsoft’s monthly security update. When MAPP partners receive vulnerability information early, they can provide updated protections to customers through their security software or devices, such as antivirus, network-based intrusion detection systems, or host-based intrusion prevention systems. ◆◆ Subscribe to the Microsoft Security Newsletter. The newsletter offers security tips, information, security bulletins and updates, pertinent articles by Microsoft Security MVPs, and information for improving your role in the IT security industry. You can subscribe at http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/secnews/default.mspx. ◆◆ Obtain security updates and service packs directly from vendors’ Web sites and not from P2P sharing, where the update could be modified with malware and redistributed. If this is unavoidable, ensure that the MD5 hash of each file you receive matches that of the original file. ◆◆ Ensure that all third-party applications are being updated regularly by the vendor. Check the vendors’ Web sites to determine whether any updates have been released and whether you need to apply them to your computers. As Microsoft continues to improve the security of its operating systems and applications, attackers have increasingly redirected their exploitation efforts toward third-party applications and customer- developed internal applications. Ensure that your development team is using the Security Development Lifecycle (SDL; http://www.microsoft.com/sdl) or a similar software security assurance process. ◆◆ Uninstall unused software to reduce your attack surface. Malicious code can exploit vulnerabilities in your applications, regardless of how frequently they are used. This includes pre-installed applications on computers purchased from OEMs. ◆◆ For downlevel clients, ensure that the Office Document Open Confirmation Tool, avail- able from the Microsoft Download Center, is installed. Installation of this tool would have helped mitigate more than 75 percent of the Office vulnerabilities identified in this report.

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Call to Action: End to End Trust

E nd to End Trust is Microsoft’s vision for a safer, more trusted Internet, built on security and privacy fundamentals, technology innovations, and the align- ment of broad social, economic, political, and IT forces. This vision builds on Microsoft’s continued commitment to improving the security and privacy of our products and services. Along with our industry partners, we will continue to build a more secure, private and reliable computing experience. But Microsoft and the technology indus- try alone cannot create a trusted online experience. For that to happen, industry must not only band together but must work with customers, partners, governments and other important constituencies on a roadmap for taking Trustworthy Computing to the Internet. An important tool for helping to realize the End to End Trust vision and building a safer Internet is education. Everyone needs to become better educated about online threats and how to defend against them. This includes everyone from people using the Internet at home to IT professionals defending today’s networks, to the developers that create the applications that people use. In the cover story of this Security Intelligence Report (Melissa Plus 10: Keeping People Safe in the Age of Malware), we describe a number of ways in which Microsoft and other stakeholders in the corporate, government, and academic worlds have collaborated in an ongoing effort to influence these forces and enable real change in today’s threat environment. We encourage all readers of the Security Intelligence Report to review these practices and find ways to take them forward to help improve the safety, security and privacy of the computing environments they manage or are responsible for. Additionally software vendors and IT Professionals an can use the resources and infor- mation provided at http://www.microsoft.com/endtoendtrust to help take security and privacy fundamentals to the next level by building more secure, privacy-enhanced soft- ware and services, cleaning up the ecosystem, and finding ways to work with others in the industry to combat online crime. Developers, network administrators, and others can take advantage of the guidance presented in the “Strategies, Mitigations, and Countermeasures” sections on pages 30, 102, 132, and 158 of this report to protect their networks and systems from current threats, as well as prepare for the future. The benefits of the Internet clearly outweigh the risks, and we look forward to working with all of you toward a safer, more trusted Internet. For more information on End to End Trust, please visit our website at www.microsoft.com/endtoendtrust.

168 January through June 2009

Microsoft Malware Protection Center

Executive Afterword

T hanks for reading volume 7 of the Microsoft Security Intelligence Report. I hope that you found it informative and useful, and that the guidance we included in this document helps you better protect your computing environment. As we discussed in our cover story, the threat landscape has evolved dramati-cally over the past 10 years. The attack vectors and approaches used to infect computershave changed, as have the motives behind those attacks. In response, software vendors andindustry groups have had to adopt and adapt new techniques and programs to combatthese threats. I want to share my personal perspective on those changes, reflect on some ofthe key trends we observed in the previous volume of the Security Intelligence Report andhighlight some of the important findings in this volume of the report.It’s funny, I recall attending anti-malware industry conferences 10 years ago where one ofthe topics discussed was the presumed imminent consolidation of the anti-malware vendorindustry. Far from shrinking, the sector has continued to expand and evolve, driven bythe dramatic rise in the sheer volume of malicious and potentially unwanted software pro-duced by criminals around the world. As this trend developed over the last ten years it hasbecome increasingly important that the major players in the anti-malware space are actingin the best interests of our collective customers.Microsoft has long been a driver of industry collaboration against IT security threats—see the section “Community-Based Defense” beginning on page 26 of this report—aswe believe this is one of the most effective ways to combat these threats. Microsoft has aunique opportunity to engage with a very wide spectrum of software vendors, anti-malware industry organizations, Government bodies and of course customers and partners;engaging and collaborating broadly will continue to be a key strategy for Microsoft as wework together to combat these threats.In volume 6 of the Microsoft Security Intelligence Report, we discussed the “rise of therogues”—the increase in prevalence of fake anti-malware products that try to convincetheir victims to give up credit card details and unwittingly install malicious software.The MMPC has added several prevalent rogue security software families to the MaliciousSoftware Removal Tool over the past year and I am pleased to report that we saw a reduc-tion in infections from these threats in the first half of 2009. We will continue to detectand remove these types of threats—any reduction in computer infections is good newsbut there is always more work to be done.Also in the first half of 2009, we saw a couple of interesting trends in malware around theworld—the return of worms as a significant threat, and a substantial increase in threatstargeting players of online games.One worm threat, Conficker, attracted a lot of media attention late in 2008 and early in2009. However, the second most prevalent threat worldwide infected almost as manymachines. Taterf, a family of worms that spreads via mapped drives and targets online

169Microsoft Security Intelligence Report

gamers, was detected and removed from more than twice as many computers worldwide as in the second half of 2008. Taterf was removed from computers more than 4.9 million times in the first half of 2009. What’s really interesting is that worms made up four of the top five threats we detected in the enterprise (from our Forefront Client Security product), but only one of the top 10 threats in the home (from Windows Live OneCare). Those four worms in the enterprise all use similar techniques to spread—infected USB and other removable drives, and insecure shared or mapped drives. As you can imagine, once a threat such as this gets inside an enterprise it can be very difficult to remove. It is extremely important, therefore, that sys- tem administrators restrict “autoplay” functionality where removable drives are concerned and make sure any shared drives have suitable passwords and access controls. Oh, and maybe consider if all that online gaming on your corporate computers is a risk factor… We are already hard at work planning future volumes of the Microsoft Security Intelligence Report. I am particularly looking forward to our first set of data from the new consumer- focused Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) offering. MSE uses the same anti-malware technology that Forefront Client Security and Windows Live OneCare use and is available free of charge for genuine Windows users in 19 countries and regions around the world with more to follow in 2010. In the first week of availability, MSE was installed more than 1.5 million times, and detected almost 4 million threats on just over 500,000 unique computers worldwide—that’s a tremen- dous number of threats neutralized that would otherwise have caused a lot of inconvenience and heartache to many people. Again, thanks for reading this volume of the Microsoft Security Intelligence Report. Please help us to improve future volumes of the report—we always appreciate your feedback and thoughts on how the report can better address your needs. Please send your feedback to the Microsoft Security Intelligence Report team at sirfb@microsoft.com. Vinny Gullotto General Manager, Microsoft Malware Protection Center Microsoft Corporation

170AppendixesMicrosoft Security Intelligence Report

Appendix A: Full Geographic Data

“ Geographic Trends,” beginning on page 38, explains how threat patterns differ significantly in different parts of the world. Figure 113 shows the infection rate in 212 different locations around the world, derived from averaging each location’s monthly CCM for each of the six months in 1H09. (CCM is the number of com- puters cleaned for every 1,000 executions of the MSRT. See “Infection Rates and CCM,” on page 37, for more information about the CCM metric.)Figure 113. Infection rates for locations around the world, by CCM, in 1H09 and 2H08

Namibia 9.8 14.5 Seychelles 10.6 6.6 Zimbabwe 20.1 20.6

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“Malicious Web Sites,” beginning on page 82, includes world and U.S. maps showing the geographic distribution of sites hosting malware and phishing pages. Figure 114 through Figure 117 show the data for the individual locations depicted on the maps. Figure 114. Phishing sites per 1,000 Internet hosts for locations around the world in 1H09

Appendix B: Threat Assessments

for Individual Locations

T he global threat landscape is evolving, with malware and potentially unwanted software becoming more regional. Starkly different threat patterns are emerging in different locations around the world. “Geographic Trends,” beginning on page 38, gives an overview of the way the relative prevalence of different categories ofmalware varies between different locations.The next several pages provide infection statistics for 14 locations around the world,encompassing every inhabited continent and multiple languages and computer usage patterns.In addition, see “Best Practices Around the World,” beginning on page 44, for guidancefrom response professionals working in four locations with consistently low infection rates.

AustraliaThe infection rate (CCM) in Australia was 3.9 in 1H09, down from 4.7 in 2H08 and sig-nificantly lower than the worldwide 1H09 infection rate of 8.7. (CCM is the number ofcomputers cleaned for every 1,000 executions of the MSRT. For more information, seepage 37.)Figure 119 and Figure 120 list the most common malware and potentially unwanted soft-ware categories and families detected by all Microsoft desktop anti-malware products inAustralia in 1H09.Figure 119. Malware and potentially unwanted software in Australia, by category, in 1H09

Notes and observations:

◆◆ The threat landscape in Australia was dominated by malware, which accounted for 75.1 percent of all threats detected on infected computers in 1H09, up from 67.3 per- cent in 2H08. ◆◆ The most common category in Australia was Miscellaneous Trojans, which includes all trojan families that are not classified as downloaders/droppers or backdoors. It was detected on 31.5 percent of all infected computers in 1H09, up from 28.3 percent in 2H08, and accounts for 11 of the top 25 families. ◆◆ The second-most common category in Australia was Trojan Downloaders & Droppers, which accounted for 24.0 percent of all infected computers. Together, Miscella- neous Trojans and Trojan Downloaders & Droppers made up more than half of all families detected on infected computers in Australia in 1H09. Figure 120. Top 25 families in Australia in 1H09

(Conficker data provided by the Shadowserver Foundation)

182 January through June 2009

Notes and observations:

◆◆ For the most accurate possible estimate of Win32/Conficker’s impact, the figure given Encyclopedia reflects the number of IP addresses infected by the A, B, C, and D variants that were Win32/Conficker: A worm detected on June 30, 2009, by sinkhole installations operated by the Shadowserver that spreads by exploiting a vulnerability addressed by Security Foundation and the CWG. For more information about Conficker and the worldwide Bulletin MS08-067. Some variants response to the threat, see “Win32/Conficker Update,” beginning on page 95, and also spread via removable drives and by exploiting weak passwords. “Case Study: The Conficker Working Group,” beginning on page 29. It disables several important system services and security products and◆◆ Five of the top 25 families (Win32/FakeXPA, Win32/Yektel, Win32/FakeRean, downloads arbitrary files. Win32/Winwebsec, and Win32/InternetAntivirus) are rogue security software pro- http://www.microsoft.com/av grams. Of these, only Win32/FakeXPA was in the top 25 in 2H08.◆◆ Six of the top 25 families are potentially unwanted software families, compared to 11 in 2H08.◆◆ ASX/Wimad, the sixteenth-most prevalent family worldwide, ranks fourth in Austra- lia. ASX/Wimad is a detection for malicious Windows media files that encourage users to download and execute arbitrary files on an affected computer. When opened with Windows Media Player, these malicious files open a particular URL in a Web browser.◆◆ Win32/Obfuscator, which is not among the top 25 families detected worldwide, ranks twenty-first in Australia. Win32/Obfuscator is a generic detection for programs that have had their purpose obfuscated to hinder analysis or detection by antivirus scanners. They commonly employ a combination of methods, including encryption, compres- sion, anti-debugging, and anti-emulation techniques.◆◆ Win32/PowerRegScheduler, which is not among the top 25 families detected world- wide, ranks twenty-third in Australia. PowerRegScheduler is a product registration system used by some legitimate software programs as a product registration reminder. It is considered potentially unwanted software because it collects personally identifi- able information (PII), such as the user’s name, address, e-mail, place of purchase, and product serial number. This data is transmitted to PowerRegScheduler’s servers and then made available to the publisher of the purchased product.

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Brazil The infection rate (CCM) in Brazil was 25.4 in 1H09, up from 20.9 in 2H08 and sig- nificantly higher than the worldwide 1H09 infection rate of 8.7. (CCM is the number of computers cleaned for every 1,000 executions of the MSRT. For more information, see page 37.) Figure 121 and Figure 122 list the most common malware and potentially unwanted soft- ware categories and families detected by all Microsoft desktop anti-malware products in Brazil in 1H09.Figure 121. Malware and potentially unwanted software in Brazil, by category, in 1H09

Notes and observations:

◆◆ The threat landscape in Brazil is clearly dominated by malware, which accounted for 90.8 percent of all families detected on infected computers, up from 83.8 percent in 2H08. ◆◆ The most common category in Brazil is Password Stealers & Monitoring Tools, which accounted for 37.7 percent of all families detected on infected computers, down from 43.7 percent in 2H08. ◆◆ The second-most common category in Brazil is Worms, which accounted for 24.9 per- cent of all families detected on infected computers, up from 13.9 percent in 2H08.

(Conficker data provided by the Shadowserver Foundation)

185Microsoft Security Intelligence Report

Notes and observations:

Encyclopedia ◆◆ Win32/Conficker, the most prevalent family in 1H09, both in Brazil and worldwide, is Win32/Conficker: A worm largely responsible for the rise in the relative prevalence of worms and the correspond- that spreads by exploiting a ing relative drop of password stealers since 2H08. vulnerability addressed by Security Bulletin MS08-067. Some variants ◆◆ For the most accurate possible estimate of Win32/Conficker’s impact, the figure given also spread via removable drives and by exploiting weak passwords. reflects the number of IP addresses infected by the A, B, C, and D variants that were It disables several important system detected on June 30, 2009, by sinkhole installations operated by the Shadowserver services and security products and downloads arbitrary files. Foundation and the CWG. For more information about Conficker and the worldwide response to the threat, see “Win32/Conficker Update,” beginning on page 95, and Win32/Banload: A family of trojans that download other malware. “Case Study: The Conficker Working Group,” beginning on page 29. Banload usually downloads Win32/ Banker, which steals banking ◆◆ Win32/Bancos and Win32/Banker, the second- and fourth-most commonly detected credentials and other sensitive families in Brazil in 1H09, are Portuguese-language password stealers that primarily data and sends it back to a remote attacker. target customers of Brazilian banks.Win32/Banker is often downloaded by Win32/ Banload, the sixth-most commonly detected family in Brazil in 1H09. http://www.microsoft.com/av

186 January through June 2009

ChinaThe infection rate (CCM) in China was 6.7 in 1H09, down significantly from 11.4 in 2H08and slightly lower than the worldwide 1H09 infection rate of 8.7. (CCM is the number ofcomputers cleaned for every 1,000 executions of the MSRT. For more information, seepage 37.)Figure 123 and Figure 124 list the most common malware and potentially unwanted soft-ware categories and families detected by all Microsoft desktop anti-malware products inChina in 1H09.Figure 123. Malware and potentially unwanted software in China, by category, in 1H09

Notes and observations:

◆◆ Potentially unwanted software, including adware and spyware, accounted for 53.7 per- cent of all families detected on infected computers in China in 1H09.◆◆ The second-most common category in China is Password Stealers & Monitoring Tools, which accounted for 20.4 percent of all families detected on infected computers.

(Conficker data provided by the Shadowserver Foundation)

188 January through June 2009

Notes and observations:

◆◆ For the most accurate possible estimate of Win32/Conficker’s impact, the figure given Encyclopedia reflects the number of IP addresses infected by the A, B, C, and D variants that were Win32/Conficker: A worm detected on June 30, 2009, by sinkhole installations operated by the Shadowserver that spreads by exploiting a vulnerability addressed by Security Foundation and the CWG. For more information about Conficker and the worldwide Bulletin MS08-067. Some variants response to the threat, see “Win32/Conficker Update,” beginning on page 95, and also spread via removable drives and by exploiting weak passwords. “Case Study: The Conficker Working Group,” beginning on page 29. It disables several important system services and security products and◆◆ Many of the most prevalent families are Chinese-language threats that don’t appear in downloads arbitrary files. the list of top threats for any other location. The Chinese-language browser toolbar, Win32/BaiduSobar: A Chinese- Win32/BaiduSobar, was the second-most prevalent family in China in 1H09,45 behind language Web browser toolbar that Win32/Conficker. delivers pop-up and contextual advertisements, blocks certain◆◆ Much of the decline in the CCM for China from 2H08 to 1H09 can be attributed to other advertisements, and changes the Internet Explorer search page. a drop in the prevalence of Win32/Lolyda, a password stealer that targets players of online games. Despite this drop, Lolyda was still the third-most prevalent family in http://www.microsoft.com/av

China in 1H09.◆◆ Win32/Microjoin, which is not among the top 25 families detected worldwide, ranks twelfth in China. Microjoin is a tool that is used to deploy malware without being detected. It is used to bundle multiple files, consisting of a clean file and malware files, into a single executable.◆◆ Win32/Killav, which is not among the top 25 families detected worldwide, ranks eigh- teenth in China. Killav is a trojan that terminates a large number of security-related processes, including those for antivirus, monitoring, or debugging tools, and may install certain exploits for the vulnerability addressed by Microsoft Security Bulletin MS08-067.

45 Figures do not include newer versions of the Baidu Sobar software, which no longer exhibits the behaviors Microsoft uses to classify software as potentially unwanted.

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France The infection rate (CCM) for France was 7.9 in 1H09, up from 7.8 in 2H08 and comparable to the worldwide 1H09 infection rate of 8.7. (CCM is the number of computers cleaned for every 1,000 executions of the MSRT. For more information, see page 37.) Figure 125 and Figure 126 list the most common malware and potentially unwanted soft- ware categories and families detected by Microsoft security products in France in 1H09.Figure 125. Malware and potentially unwanted software in France, by category, in 1H09

Notes and observations:

Encyclopedia ◆◆ The threat landscape in France in 1H09 consisted mostly of malware, which accounted Win32/Taterf: A family of worms for 79.6 percent of all families removed from infected computers, up from 61.2 percent that spread through mapped in 2H08. drives in order to steal login and account details for popular online ◆◆ The most common category in France was Miscellaneous Trojans, which includes all games. trojan families that are not classified as downloaders/droppers or backdoors. It was http://www.microsoft.com/av detected on 34.4 percent of all infected computers, up from 24.7 percent in 2H08, and accounts for 8 of the top 25 families. ◆◆ The second-most common category in France was Worms, which accounted for 18.0 percent of all infected computers. Detection of worms in 1H09 was up from 9.6 percent in 2H08, due in large part to increased detections of Win32/Taterf.

(Conficker data provided by the Shadowserver Foundation)

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Notes and observations:

Encyclopedia ◆◆ For the most accurate possible estimate of Win32/Conficker’s impact, the figure given Win32/Conficker: A worm reflects the number of IP addresses infected by the A, B, C, and D variants that were that spreads by exploiting a detected on June 30, 2009, by sinkhole installations operated by the Shadowserver vulnerability addressed by Security Bulletin MS08-067. Some variants Foundation and the CWG. For more information about Conficker and the worldwide also spread via removable drives response to the threat, see “Win32/Conficker Update,” beginning on page 95, and and by exploiting weak passwords. It disables several important system “Case Study: The Conficker Working Group,” beginning on page 29. services and security products and downloads arbitrary files. ◆◆ Three of the top 25 families (Win32/FakeXPA,Win32/SpywareSecure, and Win32/ Yektel) are rogue security software programs. Of these, only Win32/FakeXPA was in http://www.microsoft.com/av the top 25 in 2H08. FakeXPA and SpywareSecure were both in the top 25 for France in 2H08, while Yektel is new to the list. Detections of SpywareSecure, in particular, have dropped significantly, from first place in 2H08 to twentieth in 1H09. ◆◆ Six of the top 25 families are potentially unwanted software families, compared to nine in 2H08. ◆◆ Win32/Wintrim, which ranks fifteenth worldwide, was the family most commonly detected on infected computers in France in 1H09. Wintrim is a family of trojans that display pop-up advertisements depending on the user’s keywords and browsing his- tory. Its variants can also monitor the user’s activities, download applications, and send system information back to a remote server. ◆◆ Win32/PlayMP3z and ASX/Wimad, which rank thirteenth and fifteenth in France, respectively, target users who are interested in playing media files. Wimad is a detec- tion for a category of malicious Windows Media files, and Win32/PlayMP3z is an adware program that displays advertisements in connection with a music player. Worldwide, Wimad ranks sixteenth, and PlayMP3z is not among the top 25 families detected on infected computers.

192 January through June 2009

GermanyThe infection rate (CCM) in Germany was 3.0 in 1H09, down from 3.6 in 2H08 and sig-nificantly lower than the worldwide 1H09 infection rate of 8.7. (CCM is the number ofcomputers cleaned for every 1,000 executions of the MSRT. For more information, seepage 37.)The infection rate in Germany is consistently among the lowest in the world. See “BestPractices Around the World,” beginning on page 44, for information and guidance fromsecurity response professionals in four of the world’s least infected countries, includingGermany.Figure 127 and Figure 128 list the most common malware and potentially unwanted soft-ware categories and families detected by all Microsoft desktop anti-malware products inGermany in 1H09.Figure 127. Malware and potentially unwanted software in Germany, by category, in 1H09

Notes and observations:

◆◆ The threat landscape in Germany was dominated by malware, which accounted for 76.4 percent of all threats detected on infected computers in 1H09, up from 62.2 per- cent in 2H08.◆◆ The most common category in Germany was Miscellaneous Trojans, which includes all trojan families that are not classified as downloaders/droppers or backdoors. It was detected on 39.5 percent of all infected computers in 1H09, up from 28.5 percent in 2H08, and accounts for 8 of the top 25 families.

193Microsoft Security Intelligence Report

◆◆ The second-most common category in Germany was Trojan Downloaders & Droppers, which accounted for 18.7 percent of all infected computers. Miscellaneous Trojans and Trojan Downloaders & Droppers made up almost half of all families detected on infected computers in Germany in 1H09. Figure 128. Top 25 families in Germany in 1H09

(Conficker data provided by the Shadowserver Foundation)

194 January through June 2009

Notes and observations:

◆◆ For the most accurate possible estimate of Win32/Conficker’s impact, the figure given Encyclopedia reflects the number of IP addresses infected by the A, B, C, and D variants that were Win32/Conficker: A worm detected on June 30, 2009, by sinkhole installations operated by the Shadowserver that spreads by exploiting a vulnerability addressed by Security Foundation and the CWG. For more information about Conficker and the worldwide Bulletin MS08-067. Some variants response to the threat, see “Win32/Conficker Update,” beginning on page 95, and also spread via removable drives and by exploiting weak passwords. “Case Study: The Conficker Working Group,” beginning on page 29. It disables several important system services and security products and◆◆ Win32/Wintrim, the most prevalent family in Germany in 1H09, is a family of trojans downloads arbitrary files. that display pop-up advertisements depending on the user’s keywords and browsing Win32/Taterf: A family of worms history. Its variants can also monitor the user’s activities, download applications, and that spread through mapped send system information back to a remote server. drives in order to steal login and account details for popular online◆◆ Game password stealers are less common in Germany than worldwide. Win32/Taterf games. and Win32/Frethog, which rank second and fifth in the world respectively, rank fif- Win32/Frethog: A large family of teenth and twenty-fifth in Germany. password-stealing trojans that target confidential data, such as account information, from massively multiplayer online games. http://www.microsoft.com/av

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Gulf Cooperation Council States (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar,

Saudi Arabia, and United Arab Emirates) The states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) had infection rates (CCM) ranging from 6.2 to 20.8 in 1H09. (CCM is the number of computers cleaned for every 1,000 execu- tions of the MSRT. For more information, see page 37.) Figure 129 lists the infection rate for each of the GCC member states. Figure 129. Infection rates (CCM) for the states of the Gulf Cooperation Council in 1H09

State CCM (1H09) CCM (2H08)

Bahrain 9.3 8.1

Figure 130 and Figure 131 list the most common malware and potentially unwanted soft- ware categories and families detected by all Microsoft desktop anti-malware products in the states of the GCC in 1H09.

Figure 130. Malware and potentially unwanted software in the Gulf Cooperation Council states, by category, in 1H09

Notes and observations:

◆◆ The threat landscape in the GCC states is clearly dominated by malware, which Encyclopedia accounted for 84.4 percent of all threats detected on infected computers in 1H09. Win32/Taterf: A family of worms that spread through mapped◆◆ The most common category in the GCC states was Worms, which accounted for drives in order to steal login and 27.8 percent of families detected on infected computers in 1H09. Win32/Taterf and account details for popular online games. Win32/Conficker, the top two families detected in the GCC states in 1H09, are both Win32/Conficker: A worm worms. that spreads by exploiting a vulnerability addressed by Security◆◆ The second-most common category in the GCC states in 1H09 was Miscellaneous Bulletin MS08-067. Some variants Trojans, which includes trojan families that are not classified as downloaders/droppers also spread via removable drives or backdoors. Miscellaneous Trojans accounted for 22.4 percent of families detected and by exploiting weak passwords. It disables several important system on infected computers in 1H09. services and security products and downloads arbitrary files.Figure 131. Top 25 families in the Gulf Cooperation Council states in 1H09 http://www.microsoft.com/av Rank Family Most Significant Category Infected Computers

(Conficker data provided by the Shadowserver Foundation)

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Notes and observations:

Encyclopedia ◆◆ For the most accurate possible estimate of Win32/Conficker’s impact, the figure given Win32/MessengerPlus: A non- reflects the number of IP addresses infected by the A, B, C, and D variants that were Microsoft add-on for Microsoft’s detected on June 30, 2009, by sinkhole installations operated by the Shadowserver Windows Live Messenger, called Messenger Plus!. It comes with Foundation and the CWG. For more information about Conficker and the worldwide an optional sponsor program response to the threat, see “Win32/Conficker Update,” beginning on page 95, and installation, detected as Spyware:Win32/C2Lop. “Case Study: The Conficker Working Group,” beginning on page 29. http://www.microsoft.com/av ◆◆ Win32/C2Lop, the eighteenth-most common family detected on infected computers worldwide in 1H09, ranks fourth in the GCC states. C2Lop is a trojan that modifies Web browser settings, adds Web browser bookmarks to advertisements, updates itself, and delivers pop-up and contextual advertisements. It is sometimes distributed with the potentially unwanted software family Win32/MessengerPlus.

198 January through June 2009

JapanThe infection rate (CCM) in Japan was 3.0 in 1H09, up from 1.7 in 2H08 and significantlylower than the worldwide 1H09 infection rate of 8.7. (CCM is the number of computerscleaned for every 1,000 executions of the MSRT. For more information, see page 37.)The infection rate in Japan is consistently among the lowest in the world. See “Best PracticesAround the World,” beginning on page 44, for information and guidance from securityresponse professionals in four of the world’s least infected countries, including Japan.Figure 132 and Figure 133 list the most common malware and potentially unwanted soft-ware categories and families detected by all Microsoft desktop anti-malware products inJapan in 1H09.Figure 132. Malware and potentially unwanted software in Japan, by category, in 1H09

Notes and observations:

◆◆ The threat landscape in Japan was dominated by malware, which accounted for Encyclopedia 86.9 percent of all threats detected on infected computers in 1H09, up from 62.2 per- Win32/Conficker: A worm cent in 2H08. that spreads by exploiting a vulnerability addressed by Security◆◆ The most common category in Japan was Worms, which accounted for 40.0 percent of Bulletin MS08-067. Some variants also spread via removable drives families detected on infected computers in 1H09. Win32/Taterf and Win32/Conficker, and by exploiting weak passwords. the top two families detected in Japan in 1H09, are both worms. It disables several important system services and security products and◆◆ The second-most common category in Japan in 1H09 was Trojan Downloaders & downloads arbitrary files. Droppers, which accounted for 15.1 percent of families detected on infected com- http://www.microsoft.com/av puters in 1H09.

(Conficker data provided by the Shadowserver Foundation)

200 January through June 2009

Notes and observations:

◆◆ For the most accurate possible estimate of Win32/Conficker’s impact, the figure given reflects the number of IP addresses infected by the A, B, C, and D variants that were detected on June 30, 2009, by sinkhole installations operated by the Shadowserver Foundation and the CWG. For more information about Conficker and the worldwide response to the threat, see “Win32/Conficker Update,” beginning on page 95, and “Case Study: The Conficker Working Group,” beginning on page 29.◆◆ Win32/Taterf, the second-most common family detected on infected computers worldwide in 1H09, ranked first by a wide margin in Japan, with almost six times as many detections as any other family. Taterf is a family of worms that spread through mapped drives in order to steal login and account details for popular online games. For more information about this class of password stealers, see “Online Gaming- Related Families,” on page 62 of Microsoft Security Intelligence Report, Volume 5 (January through June 2008).◆◆ Win32/Antinny, which is not among the top 25 families detected worldwide, ranks eighth in Japan. Antinny is a family of worms that spreads using a Japanese peer-to- peer file-sharing application named Winny. The worm creates a copy of itself with a deceptive file name in the Winny upload folder so that it can be downloaded by other Winny users.◆◆ Win32/Hupigon, which is not among the top 25 families detected worldwide, ranks twelfth in Japan. Hupigon is a family of backdoor trojans that are prevalent in a number of places in Asia. It sometimes drops a keystroke logger and password stealer and may support other malicious add-ons, as well.◆◆ Win32/Haxdoor, which is not among the top 25 families detected worldwide, ranks twentieth in Japan. Haxdoor is a backdoor trojan that allows remote control of the machine over the Internet. The trojan is rootkit-enabled, allowing it to hide processes and files related to the threat. Haxdoor lowers security settings on the computer and gathers user and system information to send to a third party.

201Microsoft Security Intelligence Report

Korea The infection rate (CCM) in Korea was 21.3 in 1H09, up from 18.3 in 2H08 and signifi- cantly higher than the worldwide 1H09 infection rate of 8.7. (CCM is the number of comput- ers cleaned for every 1,000 executions of the MSRT. For more information, see page 37.) Figure 134 and Figure 135 list the most common malware and potentially unwanted soft- ware categories and families detected by all Microsoft desktop anti-malware products in Korea in 1H09.

Figure 134. Malware and potentially unwanted software in Korea, by category, in 1H09

Notes and observations:

Encyclopedia ◆◆ The threat landscape in Korea was dominated by malware, which accounted for Win32/Conficker: A worm 81.9 percent of all threats detected on infected computers in 1H09. that spreads by exploiting a vulnerability addressed by Security ◆◆ The most common category in Korea was Worms, which accounted for 36.2 percent of Bulletin MS08-067. Some variants families detected on infected computers in 1H09. Win32/Taterf and Win32/Conficker, also spread via removable drives and by exploiting weak passwords. ranked first and third in Korea in 1H09, are both worms. It disables several important system services and security products and ◆◆ The second-most common category in Korea in 1H09 was Password Stealers & Moni- downloads arbitrary files. toring Tools, which accounted for 14.0 percent of families detected on infected com- http://www.microsoft.com/av puters in 1H09.

(Conficker data provided by the Shadowserver Foundation)

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Notes and observations:

◆◆ For the most accurate possible estimate of Win32/Conficker’s impact, the figure given reflects the number of IP addresses infected by the A, B, C, and D variants that were detected on June 30, 2009, by sinkhole installations operated by the Shadowserver Foundation and the CWG. For more information about Conficker and the worldwide response to the threat, see “Win32/Conficker Update,” beginning on page 95, and “Case Study: The Conficker Working Group,” beginning on page 29. ◆◆ Win32/Taterf and Win32/Frethog, ranked first and second in Korea in 1H09, both belong to a group of loosely related families that target players of online games, which are popular in Korea, and attempt to steal their login credentials. Win32/Corripio, ranked sixteenth in Korea in 1H09, is another game password stealer. For more infor- mation about this class of threat, see “Online Gaming-Related Families,” on page 62 of Microsoft Security Intelligence Report, Volume 5 (January through June 2008). ◆◆ Several of the top families in Korea are potentially unwanted software families that primarily target Korean-language audiences. Win32/Pointfree, ranked fifth, is a browser modifier that redirects users when invalid Web site addresses or search terms are entered in the Windows Internet Explorer address bar. Win32/Ithink, ranked four- teenth, displays pop-up advertisements; it is usually bundled with other applications. Win32/Nieguide, ranked tenth, is a detection for a DLL file that connects to a Web site and may display advertisements or download other programs.

204 January through June 2009

MalaysiaThe infection rate (CCM) in Malaysia was 5.1 in 1H09, up from 3.5 in 2H08 and lowerthan the worldwide 1H09 infection rate of 8.7. (CCM is the number of computers cleanedfor every 1,000 executions of the MSRT. For more information, see page 37.)Figure 136 and Figure 137 list the most common malware and potentially unwanted soft-ware categories and families detected by all Microsoft desktop anti-malware products inMalaysia in 1H09.Figure 136. Malware and potentially unwanted software in Malaysia, by category, in 1H09

◆◆ The threat landscape in Malaysia is dominated by malware, which accounted for

69.6 percent of all threats detected on infected computers in 1H09. Encyclopedia◆◆ The most common category in Malaysia was Worms, which accounted for 28.1 percent Win32/Conficker: A worm of families detected on infected computers in 1H09. Win32/Conficker and Win32/Taterf, that spreads by exploiting a vulnerability addressed by Security the top two families detected in Malaysia in 1H09, are both worms. Bulletin MS08-067. Some variants also spread via removable drives◆◆ The second-most common category in Malaysia in 1H09 was Miscellaneous Trojans, and by exploiting weak passwords. which includes trojan families that are not classified as downloaders/droppers or It disables several important system services and security products and backdoors. Miscellaneous Trojans accounted for 17.0 percent of families detected on downloads arbitrary files. infected computers in 1H09. Win32/Taterf: A family of worms that spread through mapped drives in order to steal login and account details for popular online games. http://www.microsoft.com/av

(Conficker data provided by the Shadowserver Foundation)

206 January through June 2009

Notes and observations:

◆◆ For the most accurate possible estimate of Win32/Conficker’s impact, the figure given Encyclopedia reflects the number of IP addresses infected by the A, B, C, and D variants that were Win32/ZangoSearch­Assistant: detected on June 30, 2009, by sinkhole installations operated by the Shadowserver Adware that monitors the user’s Web browsing activity and displays Foundation and the CWG. For more information about Conficker and the worldwide pop-up advertisements related response to the threat, see “Win32/Conficker Update,” beginning on page 95, and to the Internet sites the user is viewing. “Case Study: The Conficker Working Group,” beginning on page 29. Win32/SeekmoSearch-◆◆ Three of the top 25 families (Win32/FakeXPA, Win32/Winwebsec, and Win32/Intern- Assistant: Adware that etAntivirus) are rogue security software programs. Rogue security software is relatively displays targeted search results and pop-up advertisements based rare in Asia; Malaysia is a notable exception, perhaps due to the relatively high per- on terms that the user enters centage of Malaysians who speak English. for Web searches. The pop-up advertisements may include adult◆◆ Likewise, 4 of the top 10 families (Win32/ZangoSearchAssistant, Win32/Seekmo- content. SearchAssistant, Win32/ZangoShoppingReports, and Win32/Hotbar) are related Win32/ZangoShopping­Reports: potentially unwanted software families published by the same software vendor. All Adware that displays targeted advertising to affected users while four rank significantly higher in Malaysia than in other locations in Asia. they browse the Internet, based on search terms entered into search◆◆ Eight of the top 25 families are potentially unwanted software families. engines. Win32/Hotbar: Adware that displays a dynamic toolbar and targeted pop-up ads based on its monitoring of Web-browsing activity. http://www.microsoft.com/av

207Microsoft Security Intelligence Report

Norway The infection rate (CCM) in Norway was 3.3 in 1H09, down from 6.8 in 2H08 and signifi- cantly lower than the worldwide 1H09 infection rate of 8.7. (CCM is the number of computers cleaned for every 1,000 executions of the MSRT. For more information, see page 37.) Figure 138 and Figure 139 list the most common malware and potentially unwanted soft- ware categories and families detected by all Microsoft desktop anti-malware products in Norway in 1H09.

Figure 138. Malware and potentially unwanted software in Norway, by category, in 1H09

Notes and observations:

◆◆ The threat landscape in Norway was dominated by malware, which accounted for 64.3 percent of all threats detected on infected computers in 1H09, down from 66.8 percent in 2H08. ◆◆ The most common category in Norway was Miscellaneous Trojans, which includes all trojan families that are not classified as downloaders/droppers or backdoors. It was detected on 28.2 percent of all infected computers in 1H09, down from 39.0 percent in 2H08, and accounts for 11 of the top 25 families. ◆◆ The second-most common category in Norway was Trojan Downloaders & Droppers, which accounted for 23.5 percent of all infected computers. Together, Miscellaneous Trojans and Trojan Downloaders & Droppers made up more than half of all families detected on infected computers in Norway in 1H09.

Notes and observations:

Encyclopedia ◆◆ Win32/Conficker, the most prevalent family worldwide in 1H09, was not among the Win32/Conficker: A worm top 25 families detected on infected computers in Norway. that spreads by exploiting a vulnerability addressed by Security ◆◆ Worms were rare in Norway in general, with only one worm (Win32/Koobface) Bulletin MS08-067. Some variants appearing among the top 25 families detected on infected computers in 1H09. also spread via removable drives and by exploiting weak passwords. ◆◆ Seven of the top 25 families (Win32/FakeXPA, Win32/Winwebsec, Win32/Yektel, It disables several important system services and security products and Win32/FakeRean, Win32/InternetAntivirus, Win32/Winfixer, and Win32/FakeSecSen) downloads arbitrary files. are rogue security software programs. Of these, FakeXPA, Winfixer, and FakeSecSen Win32/Koobface: A multi- were in the top 25 for Norway in 2H08, and the others are newcomers to the list. component family of malware used to compromise computers ◆◆ Seven of the top 25 families are potentially unwanted software families, compared to and use them to perform various 11 in 2H08. malicious tasks. It spreads through the internal messaging systems of ◆◆ Win32/Microbillsys, which is not among the top 25 families detected worldwide, ranks popular social networking sites. eighth in Norway. Microbillsys is a program that processes payments made to a billing http://www.microsoft.com/av Web site. It is considered potentially unwanted software because it cannot be removed from the Add/Remove Programs list in Control Panel; rather, a user requires an “unin- stall code” before the program can be removed.

210 January through June 2009

RussiaThe infection rate (CCM) in Russia was 15.0 in 1H09, down from 21.1 in 2H08 and sig-nificantly higher than the worldwide 1H09 infection rate of 8.7. (CCM is the number ofcomputers cleaned for every 1,000 executions of the MSRT. For more information, seepage 37.)Figure 140 and Figure 141 list the most common malware and potentially unwanted soft-ware categories and families detected by all Microsoft desktop anti-malware products inRussia in 1H09.Figure 140. Malware and potentially unwanted software in Russia, by category, in 1H09

Notes and observations:

◆◆ The threat landscape in Russia was dominated by malware, which accounted for Encyclopedia 79.7 percent of all threats detected on infected computers in 1H09, down from Win32/Conficker: A worm 81.1 percent in 2H08. that spreads by exploiting a vulnerability addressed by Security◆◆ The most common category in Russia was Worms, which accounted for 32.7 percent Bulletin MS08-067. Some variants also spread via removable drives of families detected on infected computers in 1H09, up from 32.2 percent in 2H08. and by exploiting weak passwords. Win32/Conficker and Win32/Taterf, the top two families detected in Russia in 1H09, It disables several important system are both worms. services and security products and downloads arbitrary files.◆◆ The second-most common category in Russia was Miscellaneous Trojans, which Win32/Taterf: A family of worms includes all trojan families that are not classified as downloaders/droppers or back- that spread through mapped drives in order to steal login and doors. It accounted for 10.9 percent of families detected on infected computers in account details for popular online 1H09, down from 13.0 percent in 2H08, and accounts for 6 of the top 25 families. games. http://www.microsoft.com/av

(Conficker data provided by the Shadowserver Foundation)

212 January through June 2009

Notes and observations:

◆◆ For the most accurate possible estimate of Win32/Conficker’s impact, the figure given reflects the number of IP addresses infected by the A, B, C, and D variants that were detected on June 30, 2009, by sinkhole installations operated by the Shadowserver Foundation and the CWG. For more information about Conficker and the worldwide response to the threat, see “Win32/Conficker Update,” beginning on page 95, and “Case Study: The Conficker Working Group,” beginning on page 29.◆◆ Rogue security software is consistently rare in Russia. Win32/FakeXPA is the only rogue security software program in the top 25, as it was in 2H08.◆◆ Four of the top 25 families are potentially unwanted software families, down from six in 2H08.◆◆ Win32/Wukill, which is not among the top 25 families detected worldwide, ranks twelfth in Russia. Wukill is a family of mass-mailing e-mail and network worms.◆◆ Win32/Kerlofost, which is not among the top 25 families detected worldwide, ranks fifteenth in Russia. Kerlofost is a browser helper object (BHO) that may modify brows- ing behavior; redirect searches; report user statistics, behavior, and searches back to a remote server; and display pop-up advertisements.◆◆ Win32/GhostRadmin, which is not among the top 25 families detected worldwide, ranks twenty-fourth in Russia. GhostRadmin is a program that allows a computer to be controlled remotely, similar to Remote Desktop. It has a number of legitimate uses but is considered potentially unwanted software because it can be used by an attacker with malicious intent to gain control of a user’s computer under some circumstances.

213Microsoft Security Intelligence Report

South Africa The infection rate (CCM) in South Africa was 5.5 in 1H09, down from 6.6 in 2H08 and lower than the worldwide 1H09 infection rate of 8.7. (CCM is the number of computers cleaned for every 1,000 executions of the MSRT. For more information, see page 37.) Figure 142 and Figure 143 list the most common malware and potentially unwanted soft- ware categories and families detected by all Microsoft desktop anti-malware products in South Africa in 1H09.

Figure 142. Malware and potentially unwanted software in South Africa, by category, in 1H09

Notes and observations:

◆◆ The threat landscape in South Africa was dominated by malware, which accounted for 81.1 percent of all threats detected on infected computers in 1H09. ◆◆ The most common category in South Africa was Worms, which accounted for 32.2 percent of families detected on infected computers in 1H09. Eight of the top 25 families in South Africa were worms, including 5 of the top 10. ◆◆ The second-most common category in South Africa was Miscellaneous Trojans, which includes all trojan families that are not classified as downloaders/droppers or back- doors. It was detected on 17.0 percent of all infected computers in 1H09.

(Conficker data provided by the Shadowserver Foundation)

215Microsoft Security Intelligence Report

Notes and observations:

Encyclopedia ◆◆ For the most accurate possible estimate of Win32/Conficker’s impact, the figure given Win32/Conficker: A worm reflects the number of IP addresses infected by the A, B, C, and D variants that were that spreads by exploiting a detected on June 30, 2009, by sinkhole installations operated by the Shadowserver vulnerability addressed by Security Bulletin MS08-067. Some variants Foundation and the CWG. For more information about Conficker and the worldwide also spread via removable drives response to the threat, see “Win32/Conficker Update,” beginning on page 95, and and by exploiting weak passwords. It disables several important system “Case Study: The Conficker Working Group,” beginning on page 29. services and security products and downloads arbitrary files. ◆◆ Three of the top 25 families (Win32/FakeXPA, Win32/InternetAntivirus, and Win32/ Yektel) are rogue security software programs. http://www.microsoft.com/av ◆◆ Five of the top 25 families are potentially unwanted software families.

◆◆ Win32/Hamweq, which is not among the top 25 families detected worldwide, ranks fifth in South Africa. Hamweq is a worm that spreads via removable drives, such as USB memory sticks. It may also be used by a remote attacker to cause the computer to participate in distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks.

216 January through June 2009

United KingdomThe infection rate (CCM) in the United Kingdom was 4.9 in 1H09, down from 5.7 in 2H08and lower than the worldwide 1H09 infection rate of 8.7. (CCM is the number of comput-ers cleaned for every 1,000 executions of the MSRT. For more information, see page 37.)Figure 144 and Figure 145 list the most common malware and potentially unwanted soft-ware categories and families detected by all Microsoft desktop anti-malware products inthe United Kingdom in 1H09.Figure 144. Malware and potentially unwanted software in the United Kingdom, by category, in 1H09

Notes and observations:

◆◆ The threat landscape in the United Kingdom was dominated by malware, which accounted for 67.1 percent of all threats detected on infected computers in 1H09, up from 61.3 percent in 2H08.◆◆ The most common category in the United Kingdom was Miscellaneous Trojans, which includes all trojan families that are not classified as downloaders/droppers or backdoors. It accounted for 33.7 percent of threats detected on infected computers in 1H09, up from 28.5 percent in 2H08, and accounts for 12 of the top 25 families, including 5 of the top 10 families.◆◆ The second-most common category in the United Kingdom was Adware, which accounted for 21.1 percent of all threats detected on infected computers.

(Conficker data provided by the Shadowserver Foundation)

218 January through June 2009

Notes and observations:

◆◆ For the most accurate possible estimate of Win32/Conficker’s impact, the figure given Encyclopedia reflects the number of IP addresses infected by the A, B, C, and D variants that were Win32/Conficker: A worm detected on June 30, 2009, by sinkhole installations operated by the Shadowserver that spreads by exploiting a vulnerability addressed by Security Foundation and the CWG. For more information about Conficker and the worldwide Bulletin MS08-067. Some variants response to the threat, see “Win32/Conficker Update,” beginning on page 95, and also spread via removable drives and by exploiting weak passwords. “Case Study: The Conficker Working Group,” beginning on page 29. It disables several important system services and security products and◆◆ Five of the top 25 families (Win32/FakeXPA, Win32/Yektel, Win32/Winwebsec, downloads arbitrary files. Win32/InternetAntivirus, and Win32/FakeRean) are rogue security software pro- http://www.microsoft.com/av grams. Of these, only Win32/FakeXPA was in the top 25 in 2H08.◆◆ Five of the top 25 families are potentially unwanted software families, compared to 11 in 2H08.◆◆ JS/Xilos is the only virus in the top 25. Xilos is a detection for a proof-of-concept JavaScript obfuscation technique, which was originally published in 2002 in the sixth issue of 29A, an early online magazine for virus creators.◆◆ Win32/Microbillsys, which is not among the top 25 families detected worldwide, ranks sixteenth in the United Kingdom. Microbillsys is a program that processes payments made to a billing Web site. It is considered potentially unwanted software because it cannot be removed from the Add/Remove Programs list in Control Panel; rather, a user requires an “uninstall code” before the program can be removed.

219Microsoft Security Intelligence Report

United States The infection rate (CCM) in the United States was 8.6 in 1H09, down from 9.1 in 2H08 and very close to the worldwide 1H09 infection rate of 8.7. (CCM is the number of comput- ers cleaned for every 1,000 executions of the MSRT. For more information, see page 37.) Figure 146 and Figure 147 list the most common malware and potentially unwanted soft- ware categories and families detected by all Microsoft desktop anti-malware products in the United States in 1H09.

Figure 146. Malware and potentially unwanted software in the United States, by category, in 1H09

Notes and observations:

◆◆ The threat landscape in the United States was dominated by malware, which accounted for 73.3 percent of all threats detected on infected computers in 1H09, up from 67.0 percent in 2H08. ◆◆ The most common category in the United States was Miscellaneous Trojans, which includes all trojan families that are not classified as downloaders/droppers or back- doors. It accounted for 33.1 percent of threats detected on infected computers in 1H09, up from 29.4 percent in 2H08, and accounts for 9 of the top 25 families. ◆◆ The second-most common category in the United States was Trojan Downloaders & Droppers, which accounted for 18.9 percent of all infected computers. Together, Miscel- laneous Trojans and Trojan Downloaders & Droppers made up more than half of all families detected on infected computers in the United States in 1H09.

Notes and observations:

Encyclopedia ◆◆ Win32/Conficker, the most prevalent family worldwide in 1H09, was not among the Win32/Conficker: A worm top 25 families detected on infected computers in the United States. that spreads by exploiting a vulnerability addressed by Security ◆◆ Four of the top 25 families (Win32/FakeXPA, Win32/Yektel, Win32/Winwebsec, Bulletin MS08-067. Some variants and Win32/InternetAntivirus) are rogue security software programs. Of these, only also spread via removable drives and by exploiting weak passwords. Win32/FakeXPA and Win32/Yektel were in the top 25 in 2H08. It disables several important system services and security products and ◆◆ Six of the top 25 families are potentially unwanted software families, compared to 11 downloads arbitrary files. in 2H08. http://www.microsoft.com/av ◆◆ JS/Xilos is the only virus in the top 25. Xilos is a detection for a proof-of-concept JavaScript obfuscation technique, which was originally published in 2002 in the sixth issue of 29A, an early online magazine for virus creators. ◆◆ Win32/Pdfjsc, which is not among the top 25 families detected worldwide, ranks twenty-first in the United States. Pdfjsc is a family of specially crafted PDF files that exploits vulnerabilities in Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Reader. The files contain mali- cious JavaScript that executes when opened with a vulnerable program.

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Appendix C: Data Sources

Microsoft Products and Services

Data included in the Microsoft Security Intelligence Report is gathered from a wide rangeof Microsoft products and services. The scale and scope of this telemetry allows the SIR todeliver the most comprehensive and detailed perspective on the threat landscape availablein the software industry:◆◆ Bing, the new search and decision engine from Microsoft, contains technology that performs billions of Web-page scans per year to seek out malicious content. Once detected, Bing displays warnings to users about the malicious content to help prevent infection.◆◆ Windows Live Hotmail has hundreds of millions of active e-mail users in more than 30 countries/regions around the world. Every incoming e-mail message is scanned by Microsoft antivirus technology to help protect users from infection.◆◆ Forefront Online Protection for Exchange protects the networks of thousands of enter- prise customers worldwide by helping to prevent malware from spreading through e-mail. FOPE scans billions of e-mail messages every year to identify and block spam and malware.◆◆ Windows Defender is a program, available at no cost to licensed users of Windows, that provides real-time protection against pop-ups, slow performance, and secu- rity threats caused by spyware and other potentially unwanted software. Windows Defender runs on more than 100 million computers worldwide.◆◆ The Malicious Software Removal Tool (MSRT) is a free tool designed to help identify and remove prevalent malware families from customer computers. The MSRT is pri- marily released as an important update through Windows Update, Microsoft Update, and Automatic Updates. A version of the tool is also available from the Microsoft Download Center. The MSRT was downloaded and executed 2.7 billion times in 1H09, or nearly 450 million times each month on average. The MSRT is not a replace- ment for an up-to-date antivirus solution because of its lack of real-time protection and because it uses only the portion of the Microsoft antivirus signature database that enables it to target specifically selected, prevalent malicious software.◆◆ Microsoft Forefront Client Security is a unified product that provides malware and potentially unwanted software protection for enterprise desktops, laptops, and server operating systems. Like Windows Live OneCare, it uses the Microsoft Malware Pro- tection Engine and the Microsoft antivirus signature database to provide real-time, scheduled, and on-demand protection.◆◆ Windows Live OneCare is a real-time protection product that combines an antivirus and antispyware scanner with phishing and firewall protection. In 2H09, Microsoft is replacing Windows Live OneCare with a new consumer-oriented protection product, Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE), at no charge to licensed users of Windows. For more information on MSE, please visit the product Web page at http://www.microsoft. com/security_essentials.

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◆◆ The Windows Live OneCare product family also includes the Windows Live OneCare safety scanner (http://safety.live.com), which is a free, online tool that detects and removes malware and potentially unwanted software using the same signature data- base as the Windows Live OneCare client product. Unlike the Windows Live OneCare client product (but like the MSRT), the Windows Live OneCare safety scanner does not offer real-time protection and cannot prevent a user’s computer from becoming infected. ◆◆ The Phishing Filter (in Internet Explorer 7) and the SmartScreen Filter (in Internet Explorer 8) offer Internet Explorer users protection against phishing sites and sites that host malware. Microsoft maintains a database of phishing and malware sites reported by users of Internet Explorer and other Microsoft products and services. When a user attempts to visit a site in the database with the filter enabled, Internet Explorer displays a warning and blocks navigation to the page. The following table summarizes the main security products available from Microsoft.

Spyware and Potentially

Main Customer Segment Malicious Software Available Unwanted Software Main at No Product Name Distribution Scan and Real-Time Scan and Real-Time Additional Consumers Business Methods Remove Protection Remove Protection Charge

Windows Download Center

Defender • • • • Windows Vista

Forefront Online Protection for • • • Web Exchange

224 January through June 2009

Software Vulnerability and Breach Data

The efforts to identify and fix vulnerabilities lacked a common naming mechanism until aconsortium led by The MITRE Corporation began publishing the Common Vulnerabili-ties and Exposures list, which drives a common naming mechanism that can be leveragedby multiple vulnerability databases and security products. The CVE naming conventionsprovide the most comprehensive list of vulnerabilities worldwide, across software productsof all types. This report uses the CVE naming conventions when identifying individualvulnerabilities.The analysis in this report uses a set of data that has been created by compiling, customiz-ing, and cross-checking several sources of data available on the Internet:◆◆ Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures Web site (http://cve.mitre.org).

◆◆ A large portion of the data analyzed originates from the CVE list maintained at this site, which is currently sponsored by the United States Department of Home- land Security. The naming mechanisms and external references to sources for additional information were particularly valuable.◆◆ National Vulnerability Database Web site (http://nvd.nist.gov).

◆◆ This database superset of the CVE list, which provides additional objective infor- mation concerning vulnerabilities, was the source used to determine severity rat- ings and exploit complexity assessment. The NVD is also sponsored by the DHS, and their data is downloadable in an XML format at http://nvd.nist.gov/download. cfm.◆◆ Security Web sites. The following sites, along with many others, were utilized for detailed verification and validation of vulnerability specifics: ◆◆ http://www.securityfocus.com

◆◆ http://www.secunia.com

◆◆ http://www.securitytracker.com

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◆◆ Vendor Web sites and support sites. The following sites, along with others, were uti- lized for confirmation and validation of vulnerability details: ◆◆ https://rhn.redhat.com/errata

◆◆ http://support.novell.com/linux/psdb

◆◆ http://sunsolve.sun.com

◆◆ http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/current.aspx

◆◆ http://www.ubuntu.com/usn

◆◆ OSF DataLossDB (http://datalossdb.org).

◆◆ Data for the “Security Breach Trends” section comes from DataLossDB, a commu- nity research project managed by the Open Security Foundation, which is aimed at documenting known and reported data-loss incidents worldwide. Security researchers around the world, including researchers at Microsoft, collaborate to build the database by submitting new incident reports and adding data to existing ones.

ActiveX control CCM

A software component of Microsoft Windows that Short for computers cleaned per mille (thousand). Thecan be used to create and distribute small applications number of computers cleaned for every 1,000 executionsthrough Internet Explorer. ActiveX controls can be of the MSRT. For example, if the MSRT has 50,000 exe-developed and used by software to perform functions cutions in a particular location in January and removesthat would otherwise not be available using normal infections from 200 computers, the CCM for that loca-Internet Explorer capabilities. Because ActiveX controls tion in January is 4.0 (200 ÷ 50,000 × 1,000). The CCMcan be used to perform a wide variety of functions, for a multiple-month period is derived by averaging theincluding downloading and running programs, vulner- CCM for each month in the period.abilities discovered in them may be exploited by malware.In addition, cybercriminals may also develop their own cleanActiveX controls, which can do damage to a system To remove malware or potentially unwanted softwareif a user visits a Web page that contains the malicious from an infected computer. A single cleaning canActiveX control. involve multiple disinfections.

adware command and control

A program that displays advertisements. While some See botnet.adware can be beneficial by subsidizing a program or cross-site scriptingservice, other adware programs may display advertise- Abbreviated XSS. An attack technique wherein anments without adequate consent. attacker inserts malicious HTML and JavaScript intobackdoor trojan a vulnerable Web page, often in an effort to distributeA type of trojan that provides attackers with remote malware or to steal sensitive information from the Webaccess to infected computers. Bots are a sub-category of site or its visitors. Despite the name, cross-site scriptingbackdoor trojans. Also see botnet. does not necessarily involve multiple Web sites. Second- order cross-site scripting involves inserting maliciousbot-herder code into a database used by a Web application, poten-An operator of a botnet. tially causing the code to be displayed for large numbers of visitors.botnetA set of computers controlled by a “command-and-control” disclosure(C&C) computer to execute commands as directed. Revelation of the existence of a vulnerability to a thirdThe C&C computer can issue commands directly (often party. Also see responsible disclosure.through Internet Relay Chat [IRC]) or by using adecentralized mechanism, like peer-to-peer (P2P) net- disinfectworking. Computers in the botnet are often called nodes To remove a malware or potentially unwanted softwareor zombies. component from a computer or to restore functionality to an infected program. Compare clean.browser modifierA program that changes browser settings, such as downloader/dropperthe home page, without adequate consent. This also See trojan downloader/dropper.includes browser hijackers. exploit Malicious code that takes advantage of software vulner- abilities to infect a computer.

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firewall Automatic Updates (AU). A version of the tool is also

A program or device that monitors and regulates traffic available for download from the Microsoft Download between two points, such as a single computer and the Center. The MSRT is not a replacement for an up-to- network server, or one server to another. date antivirus solution because the MSRT specifically targets only a small subset of malware families that are generic determined to be particularly prevalent. Further, the A type of signature capable of detecting a large variety MSRT includes no real-time protection and cannot be of malware samples from a specific family, or of a used for the prevention of malware. More details about specific type. the MSRT are available at http://www.microsoft.com/ security/malwareremove/default.mspx. heuristics A tool or technique that enhances the ability to identify malware certain, and potentially common, code patterns. This is Malicious software or potentially unwanted software useful for making, for example, generic detections for a installed without adequate user consent. malware family. malware impression IFrame A single instance of a user attempting to visit a page Short for inline frame. An IFrame is an HTML document known to host malware and being blocked by the that is embedded in another HTML document. Because SmartScreen Filter in Internet Explorer 8. Also see the IFrame loads another Web page, it can be used by phishing impression. criminals to place malicious HTML content, such as a script that downloads and installs spyware, into non- monitoring tool malicious HTML pages hosted by trusted Web sites. Software that monitors activity, usually by capturing keystrokes or screen images. It may also include net- in the wild work sniffing software. Also see password stealer (PWS). Said of malware that is currently detected in active com- puters connected to the Internet, as compared to those parser vulnerability confined to internal test networks, malware research A vulnerability in the way an application processes, laboratories, or malware sample lists. or parses, a file of a particular format, which can be exploited through the use of a specially crafted file. keylogger Also see vulnerability. See password stealer (PWS). password stealer (PWS) macro virus Malware that is specifically used to transmit personal A type of virus written as a macro for an application information, such as user names and passwords. A PWS (such as Microsoft Word or Excel). A macro virus often works in conjunction with a keylogger, which infects a file by replicating itself as a macro for that file, sends keystrokes or screen shots to an attacker. Also see ensuring that when the file is opened, the virus is run. monitoring tool. Malicious Software Removal Tool payload The Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool is The actions conducted by a piece of malware for which designed to help identify and remove specifically it was created. This can include, but is not limited to, targeted, prevalent malware from customer computers downloading files, changing system settings, displaying and is available at no charge to licensed Windows users. messages, and logging keystrokes. The main release mechanism of the MSRT is through Windows Update (WU), Microsoft Update (MU), or

phishing impression signature

A single instance of a user attempting to visit a known A set of malware characteristics that can be used tophishing page, with Internet Explorer 7 or Internet identify it using antivirus/antispyware products.Explorer 8, and being blocked by the Phishing Filter sinkholeor SmartScreen Filter. Also see malware impression. A server or set of servers designed to absorb and analyzepolymorphic malware traffic.A virus that can mutate its structure to avoid detection social engineeringby antivirus programs. It can mutate usually by chang- A technique that defeats security precautions in placeing a variable or variables in its code without changing by exploiting human vulnerabilities. Social engineeringits overall algorithm. scams can be both online (such as receiving e-mails thatpotentially unwanted software ask you to click the attachment, which is actually mal-A program with potentially unwanted behavior that is ware) and offline (such as receiving a phone call frombrought to the user’s attention for review. This behavior someone posing as a representative from your creditmay impact the user’s privacy, security, or computing card company). Regardless of the method selected,experience. the purpose of a social engineering attack remains the same—to get the targeted user to perform an action ofremote control software the attacker’s choice.A program that provides access to a computer from aremote location. These programs are often installed by spamthe computer owner or administrator and are only a risk Bulk unsolicited e-mail. Malware authors may use spamif unexpected. to distribute malware, either by attaching the malware to the message or by sending a message containing aresponsible disclosure link to the malware. Malware may also harvest e-mailThe practice of disclosing vulnerabilities privately to addresses for spamming from compromised machinesan affected vendor so it can develop a comprehensive or may use compromised machines to send spam.security update to address the vulnerability before itbecomes public knowledge. spyware A program that collects information, such as the Webrogue security software sites a user visits, without adequate consent. InstallationSoftware that appears to be beneficial from a security may be without prominent notice or without the user’sperspective but provides limited or no security capabili- knowledge.ties, generates a significant number of erroneous or mis-leading alerts, or attempts to socially engineer the userinto participating in a fraudulent transaction.

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SQL injection vulnerability broker

A technique in which an attacker enters a specially A company or other entity that provides software crafted Structured Query Language (SQL) statement vendors with vulnerability information provided to it into an ordinary Web form. If form input is not filtered by external security researchers. In exchange for such and validated before being submitted to a database, the compensation as the broker may provide, the security malicious SQL statement may be executed, which could researchers agree not to disclose any information about cause significant damage or data loss. the vulnerability to anyone other than the broker and the affected vendor. trojan A generally self-contained program that does not self- wild replicate but takes malicious action on the computer. See in the wild.

trojan downloader/dropper worm

A form of trojan that installs other malicious files to Malware that spreads by spontaneously sending copies the infected system either by downloading them from of itself through e-mail or by using other communica- a remote computer or by dropping them directly from a tion mechanisms, such as instant messaging (IM) or copy contained in its own code. peer-to-peer (P2P) applications.

virus XSS Malware that replicates, commonly by infecting other See cross-site scripting. files in the system, thus allowing the execution of the malware code and its propagation when those files are activated.

vulnerability A weakness, error, or poor coding technique in a program that may allow an attacker to exploit it for a malicious purpose. Also see parser vulnerability.